om all gossip. It appears, even
in the country in England, Mrs. Gurrage is considered quite an oddity,
but every one knows and accepts her, because she is so charitable and
gives hundreds to any scheme the great ladies start.

She was the daughter of a small publican in one of the southern
counties, Miss Burton said, and married Mr. Gurrage, then a commercial
traveller in carpets. (How does one travel in carpets?) Anyway,
whatever that is, he rose and became a partner, and finally amassed a
huge fortune, and when they were both quite old they got "Augustus."
He was "a puny, delicate boy," to quote Miss Burton again, and was not
sent to school--only to Cambridge later on. Perhaps that is what gives
him that look of his things fitting wrong, and his skin being puffy
and flabby, as if he had never been knocked about by other boys.
My friend of the knife, even with his coating of mud, looked quite
different.

Oh! I wonder if I shall ever know any people of one's own sort that
one has not to be polite to against the grain because one happens to
be one's self a lady. Perhaps there are numbers of nice people in this
neighborhood, but they naturally don't trouble about us in our tiny
cottage, and so we see practically nobody.

Just as Miss Burton was leaving Mr. Gurrage rode up. He tried to open
the gate with the end of his whip, but he could not, and would have
had to dismount only Miss Burton rushed forward to open it for him.
Then he got down and held the bridle over his arm and walked up the
little path.

"Send some one to hold my horse," he said to Hephzibah, who answered
his ring at the door. I could hear, as the window was a little open
and he has a loud voice.

"There is no one to send, sir," said Hephzibah, who, I am sure, felt
annoyed. Two laborers happened to be passing in the road, and he
got one of them to hold his horse, and so came in at last. He _is_
unattractive when you see him in a room; he seemed blustering and yet
ill at ease. But he did not thank us for keeping the suite clean! He
was awfully friendly, and asked us to make use of his garden, and, in
fact, anything we wanted. I hardly spoke at all.

"You _have_ made a snug little crib of it," he said, in such a
patronizing voice--how I dislike sentences like that; I don't know
whether or no they are slang (grandmamma says I use slang myself
sometimes!), but "a snug little crib" does not please me. He took off
his glove when I gave him some tea, and