Miss Jeanie was probably not more than forty-five, and Miss Maggie some six years older. They were both moderately tall, moderately stout, and of a healthy, homely aspect which did not challenge observation. Miss Jeanie, indeed, wore a curly fringe, and on muddy days a serge golf-skirt that barely reached her substantial ankles, but Miss Maggie’s mouse-coloured hair was brushed back over a cushion and displayed every inch of her intellectual forehead. Miss Maggie took in "Wise Words," and had literary leanings toward everything of an improving character. At one time they had kept a "fancy-work emporium" on the South-side, but they had not been dependent upon their sales of Berlin wool or crochet cotton, and as the emporium was by no means thronged with customers it had seemed good to them to retire from business and seek in the country that seclusion and select society which their genteel souls hungered after. They were sincerely convinced that the emporium of the past could not in any way preclude their reception into such society. "It could not exactly be called trade, me dear," Miss Maggie argued, "for you see our _clientèle_ was so exceedingly select. We were never called upon to serve a man in all the years——" "Not so very many years, Maggie," Miss Jeanie would interrupt. "During the time our residence was above the emporium," Miss Maggie continued calmly. "That makes a very great difference. Anybody can come into an ordinary shop. A stationer’s now—a man might burst into a stationer’s at any minute to buy envelopes or elastic bands, or a bit rubber: but no man would dream of entering a—place where Berlin wools and fingering and sewing silks are to be had. And you know, me dear, it always seems to me that so long as no strange man has had the opportunity to accost one, one’s delicacy cannot be said to have suffered in any way." "I’ve heard," said Miss Jeanie, with a little sigh, "that in London one may be accosted on the public street. It must be terrible to be accosted by a strange man. I think I should faint away at his feet from sheer terror." "Indeed," replied Miss Maggie, bridling. "_I_ should do no such thing. I would freeze him with a glance." So far, however, neither of these ladies had been called upon either to faint or to freeze. Mankind had passed them by in decorous silence. Neither of them had ever been accosted by anyone more alarming than a village urchin, and their delicacy and their gentility remained unimpaired. For truly they were vastly genteel. The real and chief attractions of Burnhead had been that the rent of their modest residence was very small, that the "big house" was occupied by "a lady of title," and that there were only two other houses in the village having any claim to be the abodes of gentility, namely, the Manse and Remote. "Surely," argued the Misses Moffat, "in such a small place the gentry will be friendly."