City. They agreed
that Mr. Pericles had hired some charming cantatrice to draw them into
the woods and delightfully bewilder them. It was to be expected of his
princely nature, they said. The Tinleys, of Bloxholme, worshipped him
for his wealth; the ladies of Brookfield assured their friends that
the fact of his being a money-maker was redeemed in their sight by his
devotion to music. Music was now the Art in the ascendant at Brookfield.
The ladies (for it is as well to know at once that they were not of
that poor order of women who yield their admiration to a thing for its
abstract virtue only)--the ladies were scaling society by the help of
the Arts. To this laudable end sacrifices were now made to Euterpe to
assist them. As mere daughters of a merchant, they were compelled to
make their house not simply attractive, but enticing; and, seeing that
they liked music, it seemed a very agreeable device. The Tinleys of
Bloxholme still kept to dancing, and had effectually driven away Mr.
Pericles from their gatherings. For Mr. Pericles said: "If that they
will go 'so,' I will be amused." He presented a top-like triangular
appearance for one staggering second. The Tinleys did not go `so' at
all, and consequently they lost the satirical man, and were called 'the
ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny scoff her sisters permitted to
pass about for a single day, and no more. The Tinleys were their match
at epithets, and any low contention of this kind obscured for them the
social summit they hoped to attain; the dream whereof was their prime
nourishment.

That the Tinleys really were their match, they acknowledged, upon the
admission of the despicable nature of the game. The Tinleys had winged a
dreadful shaft at them; not in itself to be dreaded, but that it struck
a weak point; it was a common shot that exploded a magazine; and for a
time it quite upset their social policy, causing them to act like simple
young ladies who feel things and resent them. The ladies of Brookfield
had let it be known that, in their privacy together, they were Pole,
Polar, and North Pole. Pole, Polar, and North Pole were designations of
the three shades of distance which they could convey in a bow: a form of
salute they cherished as peculiarly their own; being a method they had
invented to rebuke the intrusiveness of the outer world, and hold away
all strangers until approved worthy. Even friends had occasionally to
submit to it in a softened form. Ar