-forgetful soul I had never the privilege to attend."

Mrs. Millar turned back in the conversation, and took to dogmatizing.
"People who are well-informed and well-bred will never descend to a
lower level without great discomfort and serious loss. I for one, though
I have not profited by the advantages the girls have commanded, and I
daresay have not their brains"--she made the frank admission with
womanly, motherly humility--"though I could not to save my life make one
of Rose's beautiful water-colour sketches, or read Greek and Latin like
'little May,' or even talk to the point on every subject under the sun
like Annie, still I should not be happy if I had to keep company with
Wilkins the butcher's or Ord the baker's wife, and they would not be
happy either. It would not matter, in one sense, though I knew they were
respectable, worthy women, and were ever so much better off as to money
than I. That would not keep me from feeling thoroughly out of place and
having hardly an idea in common with my neighbours in their
plush-trimmed gowns and fur-lined mantles. I could not stand such
degradation for my girls," she protested, with rising agitation. "I had
far rather that they and I should be the poorest ladies in the land,
should have to pinch and deny ourselves all round."

"It is little you know of it," muttered Dr. Millar, shaking his white
head, and pensively contemplating his finger-nails.

"While we still retained the position to which we were born, and the
associations among which we were reared," ended Mrs. Millar, with a
gasp.

"Bless the woman, what does she mean?" cried Dr. Millar after his lively
fashion, with an air of injured innocence. "Does she pretend that Tom
Robinson has not been educated--stamped, for that matter, with the last
university brand, to which he does credit, I must say? Stay, there goes
the night-bell. I am wanted for somebody."

"You'll never go out again to-night, Jonathan," pleaded Mrs. Millar,
"after all your worry, when you have not had more than a couple of
hours' rest." She was already reproaching herself keenly for having
contradicted and argued with him. She had never been able to comprehend,
for her comfort, that to a man like him an argument is both rousing and
refreshing. In the middle of her remorse she instinctively held up her
head, and balanced her cap as a Dutchwoman of the last century balanced
her milk-pail, or a girl of the Roman Campagna her sheaf of grass and
wild