see here."

"I don't know quite what you mean, but it is probably something
disobedient and cruel," and Mrs. Furze became slightly hysterical again.

Catharine made no offer of any sympathy, but, leaving her supper
unfinished, rose without saying good-night, and appeared no more that
evening.

CHAPTER VI

"My dear," said Mrs. Furze to her husband the next night when they were
alone, "I think Catharine would be much better if she were sent away from
home for a time. Her education is very imperfect, and there are
establishments where young ladies are taken at her age and finished. It
would do her a world of good."

Mr. Furze was not quite sure about the finishing. It savoured of a
region outside the modest enclosure within which he was born and brought
up.

"The expense, I am afraid, will be great, and I cannot afford it just
now. There is no denying that business is no better; in fact, it is not
so good as it was, notwithstanding the alterations."

"You cannot expect it to recover at once. Something must be done to put
Catharine on a level with the young women in her position, and my notion
is that everything which will help to introduce us into society will help
you. Why does Mrs. Butcher go out so much? It is because she knows it
is a good investment."

"An ironmonger is not a doctor."

"Who said he was?" replied Mrs. Furze, triumphant in the consciousness of
mental superiority. "Furze," she once said to him, when it was proposed
to elect him a guardian of the poor, "take my advice and refuse. Your
_forte_ is not argument: you will never held your own in debate."

"I know an ironmonger is not a doctor," she continued. "_I_ of all
people have reason to know it; but what I do say is, that the more we mix
with superior people, the more likely you are to succeed, and that if you
bury yourself in these days you will fail."

The italicised "I" was an allusion to a fiction that once Mrs. Furze
might have married a doctor if she had liked, and thereby have secured
the pre-eminence which the wife of a drug-dispenser assumes in a country
town. The grades in Eastthorpe were very marked, and no caste
distinctions could have been more rigid. The county folk near were by
themselves. They associated with none of the townsfolk, save with the
rector, and even in that relationship there was a slight tinge of
ex-officiosity. Next to the rector were the lawyer and the banker and
the two maiden banker l