d. But she seemed curiously
smaller, and less significant, this woman who, with a certain pedagogic
air, used to instruct girls in grace and boys in gallantry, this woman
who was regarded by all her pupils as the authoritative source of
correctness and ease in deportment. "Now, Master Charles," Hilda could
remember her saying, "will you ask me for the next polka all over again,
and try not to look as if you were doing me a favour and were rather
ashamed of yourself?" She had a tongue for the sneaping of too casual
boys, and girls also.

And she spoke so correctly, as correctly as she performed the figures of
a dance! Hilda, who also spoke without the local peculiarities, had been
deprived of her Five Towns accent at Chetwynd's School, where the purest
Kensingtonian was inculcated; but Miss Gailey had lost hers in
Kensington itself--so rumour said--many years before. And now, in her
declension, she was still perfect of speech. But the authority and the
importance were gone in substance: only the shadow of them remained. She
had now, indeed, a manner half apologetic and half defiant, but
timorously and weakly defiant. Her head was restless with little nervous
movements; her watery eyes seemed to say: "Do not suppose that I am not
as proud and independent as ever I was, because I _am_. Look at my silk
dress, and my polished boots, and my smooth hair, and my hands! Can
anyone find any trace of shabbiness in _me_?" But beneath all this
desperate bravery was the wistful acknowledgment, continually-peeping
out, that she had after all come down in the world, albeit with a
special personal dignity that none save she could have kept.

II

The two women were seated at a splendid fire. Hilda, whose nervousness
was quickly vanishing, came between them to warm her hands that were
shining with cold, despite muff and gloves. "Here, mother!" she said
teasingly, putting the muff and gloves in her mother's lap.

Sarah Gailey rose with slow stiffness from her chair.

"Now don't let this child disturb you, Sarah!" Mrs. Lessways protested.

"Oh no, Caroline!" said Miss Gailey composedly. "I was only getting my
apron."

From a reticule on the table she drew forth a small black satin apron on
which was embroidered in filoselle a spray of moss-roses. It was
extremely elegant--much more so than Mrs. Lessways'--though not in quite
the latest style of fashionable aprons; not being edible, it had
probably been long preserved in a wardrobe