"Five feet five in my stockings----" "Please do not be frivolous. Taking you as you stand--a woman of education, culture, and refinement----" "Youth, beauty, and boundless wealth--go on! Word-painting is cheap." "I thought you were going to give me a fair hearing?" "So I will, dear. Forgive me!" "It used to be a favourite theory of yours that 'every man truly lives so long as he acts himself, or in any way makes good the faculties of himself.'" "So it is still, now that you remind me of it. _Après?_" "Oh, Mona, you know all I would say. Are you making good the faculties of yourself? With the most glorious life-work in the world opening before you--work that I would give all I possess to be allowed to share--you deliberately turn aside and waste six precious months among people who do not understand you, and who won't appreciate you one bit." "I admire the expression 'opening before me,' when the examiners have twice slammed the door in my face. But, as you say, we won't discuss that. You talk as if I were going on a mission to the Hottentots. I am only going to my own people. I do not suppose I am any more superior to my cousin Rachel than the Munros are superior to me." "Nonsense!" "At least you will admit that she is my blood-relation. You can't deny that claim." "I can't deny the relationship, distant though it is, but I do distinctly deny the claim. You know, Mona, we all have what are called 'poor relations.'" "I suppose many of us have," said Mona meditatively, after a pause. "You will scarcely believe it, but for the last three weeks I have been fancying that my position is unique." "Of course it is not. We are all in the same boat, more or less. My brother Frank says that, after mature consideration on the subject of so-called poor relations, he has come to the conclusion that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it is better to cut the connection at once and altogether." Mona raised her eyebrows. "Doris Colquhoun quotes that?" The colour rose to Doris's face, but she went on-- "Not because of their poverty. I do not need to tell you that. There are people who earn thirty pounds a year by the sweat of their brow whom one is proud to have at one's table. It is because they have different ideas, speak a different language, live in a different world. What can one do at the best? Frank says,--Spend a week in the country with them once a year or so, and invite them to spend a fortnight in town. What is the result? They feel the difference between themselves and you, they don't like it, and they call you 'snob.' Suppose you ignore them altogether? The net result is the same. They call you 'snob.' The question is, Is it worth all the trouble and friction?" "Doris, Doris," said Mona, "that is the sheerest casuistry. You know no power on earth would tempt you to cut your own poor relations."