“He called on her--merely a parochial call. He said that he liked to be identified with all his parishioners--whatever their views. Could anything be more broad, more generous?” “Well?” The Jeremy Crisp girl continued: “She actually laughed in his face, and said she had not any views; didn’t he consider views narrow?” “She’s not a lady.” “That’s not all. He met her in the lane next day. He nodded most affably; you know his rule: a nod to people who walk, a bow to those who keep a carriage. It is a wise rule--it defines the classes so well, which is absolutely necessary, or where should we be?” One or two superior cousins sneered at each other across the teacups. The airs of these Jeremy Crisps! “_She cut him dead!_” “I spoke to her about _that_,” Mrs. Turle said gently. “Well! What did she say? Short sight? She wears glasses for effect, no doubt.” “Those eye-glasses make one look so intelligent, they really do,” put in a quiet cousin, who had scarcely spoken all the afternoon; “I thought of getting some.” “She said that the men of her acquaintance might touch their hats or raise them--which they choose. If none of us would put that insufferable Mr. Meadows in his place, she must.” “You never should have called on her, Aunt Sophy.” “My dear Maria, she is a neighbor. And you never know how these queer people from London may turn out. Sometimes they prove desirable. I hesitated a long time, though, when I heard her husband was a journalist: very often journalist means swindler.” “She looks to me like a woman who drinks,” Maria Furlonger said. “Drink makes people talk at random; drink makes people forget their duty to their superiors in the parish.” “Dear mother always said that a drunken woman was such a much more painful sight than a drunken man,” Annie Jayne said. “Oh! I can’t believe it of her, Maria. She was quite nice to Baby the other day.” Annie had her first baby, and thought of very little else besides. If anyone admired Baby she concluded, in her simple, ardently maternal way, that such admiration was a moral certificate. “Drink! Nonsense!” said Mrs. Turle, quite sharply for her. “I must say she has very clever ideas. She told me the other day that she was thinking of patenting an automatic arrangement for making cyclists swallow their own dust--though it would never do for you, Nancy, with your chest. Why, here is Jethro. I suppose he has come to take you away, Pamela?” CHAPTER VI. THE autumn rains set in early that year. Every night when Pamela fell asleep in her bedstead with the fluted posts and hangings of chintz, having a fearful pattern of black roses, she heard the murmuring rush of rain down the pipes and into the soft-water tubs. Every morning she was awakened by the swish of rain against the casement and the clatter of the maidservant’s clogs on the stones in the yard.