People were extremely punctilious on the subject of calls--one remembers the call in the ‘Mill on the Floss.’ The call was due at regular intervals, so that even the day should almost be known on which it was paid or returned. It was a ceremonial which necessitated a great deal of ritual and make-believe. No one, for instance, was to be surprised in doing any kind of work. There was a fiction in genteel families that the ladies of the house never did anything serious or serviceable after dinner; the afternoon was supposed to be devoted either to walking, or to making calls, or to elegant trifling at home. Therefore, if the girls were at the moment engaged upon any useful work--many of them, poor things, never did anything but useful work--they crammed it under the sofa, and pretended to be reading a book, or painting, or knitting, or to be engaged in easy and fashionable conversation. Why they went through this elaborate pretence I have not the least idea, because everybody knew that every girl in the place was always making, mending, cutting-out, basting, gusseting, trimming, turning, and contriving. How do you suppose that the solicitor’s daughters made so brave a show on Sundays if they were not clever enough to make up things for themselves? Everybody, of course, knew it, and why the girls would not own up at once one cannot now understand. Perhaps it was a sort of suspicion, or a faint hope, or a wild dream, that a reputation for ladylike uselessness might enable them to cross the line at the County Ball, and mingle with the county people.