Next spring, a year after her mother’s death, she felt the vague stirring of her individual soul. She was free to choose her own vicar; she left her mother’s Dr. Braithwaite, who was broad and twice married, and went to Canon Wrench, who was unmarried and high. There was something stimulating in the short, happy service, the rich music, the incense, and the processions. She made new covers for the drawing-room, in cretonne, a gay pattern of pomegranate and blue-green leaves. And as she had always had the cutlets broiled plain because her mother liked them that way, now she had them breaded. And Mrs. Hancock wanted to know _why_ Harriett had forsaken her dear mother’s church; and when Connie Pennefather saw the covers she told Harriett she was lucky to be able to afford new cretonne. It was more than _she_ could; she seemed to think Harriett had no business to afford it. As for the breaded cutlets, Hannah opened her eyes and said, “That was how the mistress always had them, ma’am, when you was away.” One day she took the blue egg out of the drawing-room and stuck it on the chimney-piece in the spare room. When she remembered how she used to love it she felt that she had done something cruel and iniquitous, but necessary to the soul. She was taking out novels from the circulating library now. Not, she explained, for her serious reading. Her serious reading, her Dante, her Browning, her Great Man, lay always on the table ready to her hand (beside a copy of _The Social Order_ and the _Remains_ of Hilton Frean) while secretly and half-ashamed she played with some frivolous tale. She was satisfied with anything that ended happily and had nothing in it that was unpleasant, or difficult, demanding thought. She exalted her preferences into high canons. A novel _ought_ to conform to her requirements. A novelist (she thought of him with some asperity) had no right to be obscure, or depressing, or to add needless unpleasantness to the unpleasantness that had to be. The Great Men didn’t _do_ it. She spoke of George Eliot and Dickens and Mr. Thackeray. Lizzie Pierce had a provoking way of smiling at Harriett, as if she found her ridiculous. And Harriett had no patience with Lizzie’s affectation in wanting to be modern, her vanity in trying to be young, her middle-aged raptures over the work--often unpleasant--of writers too young to be worth serious consideration. They had long arguments in which Harriett, beaten, retired behind _The Social Order_ and the _Remains_. “It’s silly,” Lizzie said, “not to be able to look at a new thing because it’s new. That’s the way you grow old.” “It’s sillier,” Harriett said, “to be always running after new things because you think that’s the way to look young. I’ve no wish to appear younger than I am.” “I’ve no wish to appear suffering from senile decay.” “There _is_ a standard.” Harriett lifted her obstinate and arrogant chin. “You forget that I’m Hilton Frean’s daughter.”