“My dear child, how remarkably severe you are! Will you tell me what use to Wilfrid Bertram are the incontestable talents with which he was born? What does he do with them? Write in such a manner that if he were a native of any other country than England he would have been lodged in prison years ago.” Cicely Seymour is silent. She has read some numbers of the _Age to Come_, and she cannot honestly say that she approves of its subversive tendencies. She looks straight before her with a heightened colour, and the rose-leaves of her lips are pressed together in irritation. “I suppose you will offer to be bridesmaid to Miss Annie Brown,” says Lady Jane, irritably. “Why not?” says Cicely, very coldly. “One attends many weddings brought about by more ignoble motives.” “You will not see me at the ceremony,” replies Lady Jane, more and more incensed. “I know I shall not, nor any of his relatives. But I do not admire the class prejudice which will keep you all away.” And she leans over the rail of the Ride and pats the mane of a child’s pony. Meanwhile, Mrs. Brown, resting her empty basket and her rheumatic limbs for a few minutes on a bench, ponders vainly on the name Mr. Fanshawe gave her. “Mrs. Sockatees,” she repeats to herself. “He can’t think as I’m one to marry agen at my time o’ life. If it hadn’t bin for the children there were a tallow chandler, a warm man too, he was, who would hev bin ready as ready----” She muses pensively a moment on the charms of the lost tallow chandler who had been sacrificed to her maternal scruples, whilst Cicely Seymour and Lady Jane are walking towards her. “Let’s sit down here a moment, Cicely,” says Lady Jane. “The children will be back again directly.” Mrs. Brown rises and curtsies, taking up her basket. “Don’t get up, my good woman, there’s room enough.” “Your ’umble servant, ma’am,” says Mrs. Brown, standing erect, her empty basket held before her like a shield of Boadicea; she does not know them by name, but they are possible clients for the wash-tub. “Why should you stand?” says Cicely. “These seats are free to all.” “Thanks, miss, but I know my duty.” Then she adds, insinuatingly, “If you should be wanting a laundress, ma’am, you’d be doin’ a charity to remember me--Eliza Brown, o’ 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square; no acids used, miss, and no machine-work.” Cicely looks at her, and with some hesitation asks: “Are you--are you--the mother of a young person called Annie Brown? She has just gone past here with some primroses.” “Yes, miss, I be.” “Of Mr. Bertram’s heroine!” adds Lady Jane, with a laugh. “Please ’m, don’t call her names, ma’am,” says Annie’s mother, quickly. “She’s a good girl, though I say it as shouldn’t say it, and there’s nought to laugh at, unless it be the gentleman’s rubbish.” “You don’t seem to be grateful for the compliment he pays to your family,” says Lady Jane, much amused.