against her; but then she had none of that genteel decay about her, which ought to be characteristic of those who had seen better days. She appeared, indeed, to make a joke of it all, rather than to lament her fallen estate. There was always a twinkle in those eyes, which were so bright, so bold, and so all-seeing. Mab had felt, like all the rest, an instinctive revulsion against her. But this had died off in that appreciation of cheerfulness and courage, which was deep in Mab’s nature. To be less well off than you used to be, and yet take it, not with a moan, but with a jest, or even a gibe, laughing at yourself, seemed to Mab a much more attractive thing than the melancholy of decayed gentility; but this was not the aspect in which the other ladies regarded it. They would all have been sorry for Mrs. Brown had she taken her humiliation sadly. What they did not understand was the joke she made of it, which, to them, seemed impudence and defiance. Perhaps, Mab thought to herself in the abundance of her thoughts as she ran along, this feeling on the part of the ladies was what the gentlemen called jealousy. It was not so bad a guess for a little girl. It may be added here that Lady William had not made acquaintance with the schoolmistress from the fact that Lady William, probably by right of having been herself the Rector’s daughter and born to that work, refused determinedly to have anything to do with the parish. She did not keep Mab back from that inevitable work, but she would not herself take any part. District visiting, schools, mothers’ or girls’ meetings, penny banks, clothing clubs, all the machinery of the parish, Lady William kept religiously apart from them all. She had a recipe for beef tea which was known far and near, the strongest and the most quickly made, everybody knew, that had ever been heard of, and would go to the kitchen and make it herself, if old Anne, who was the sovereign there, was out of the way or out of temper: and puddings came from her house for the sick people which would have tempted an anchorite to eat: and if warm things were wanted for the winter there was no end to the flannel petticoats, the children’s frocks, and the knitted comforters and stockings which Lady William could turn out. But that was all. She said lightly that there were plenty of people to manage the parish, and that it was not her rôle. She took no responsibility, and had not entered the schools since she was Emily Plowden aiding and abetting all manner of little rebellions in a way not at all becoming for the Rector’s daughter. This was one reason she gave for taking no supervision of the schools now. ‘I should always be on the children’s side,’ she said, and thus it happened, which was so strange, that she had never even seen Mrs. Brown.