ot working properly: like a pencil without
a point. A picture was a decoration in paint and was either a pretty
decoration in paint or a not pretty decoration in paint. Music was a
tune, and was either a tune or merely music. A book was a story, and if
it was not a story it was simply a book. A flower was a decoration.
Poetry, such as

"While the still morn went out with sandals grey,"

was simply writing which, obviously, had no real meaning whatsoever, and
obviously--well, read the thing--was not intended to have any meaning. A
fine deed was fine precisely in proportion to the social position of the
person who performed it. Scott's death at the South Pole, when that was
announced in 1913, was fine because he was a gentleman. The disaster of
the colliers entombed in the Welsh Senghenydd mine which happened in the
same year was sad. "How sad!" She read the account, on the first day,
with the paper held up wide open and said "How sad!" and turned on to
something for which the paper might be folded back at the place and read
comfortably. Scott's death she read with the paper folded back at the
account. She liked seeing the pictures of Lady Scott and of Scott's
little boy. She read the caption under one of the pictures of the wives
and families of the four hundred and twenty-nine colliers killed in the
Senghenydd mine, but not under any of the others. The point she noted
was that all the women "of that class" wore "those awful cloth
caps",--the colliers' women just the same as the women in the mean
streets of Tidborough Old Town.

She was never particularly grateful for anything given to her or done
for her; not because she was not pleased and glad but because she could
invest a gift with no imagination of the feelings of the giver. The
thing was a present just as a pound of bacon was a pound of bacon. You
said thank you for the present just as you ate the bacon. What more was
to be said?

She revelled in gossip, that is to say in discussion with her own class
of the manners and doings of other people. She thought charity meant
giving jelly and red flannel to the poor; she thought generosity meant
giving money to some one; she thought selfishness meant not giving money
to some one. She had no idea that the only real charity is charity of
mind, and the only real generosity generosity of mind, and the only real
selfishness selfishness of mind. And she simply would not have
understood it if it had been explained to he