Katherine was no judge of drawing any more than she was of literature, and though the little picture did not appeal to her (for there were pictures at the Cliff, and she had lived in the same room with several Hunts and one supreme scrap of Turner--bought a bargain on the information that it was a safe investment many years ago--and therefore had an eye more cultivated than she was aware of) she was impressed by her friend’s achievement, and thought it was a great thing to employ your time in such elevated ways. Evelyn, who was only seventeen and very frolicsome, wrote essays for the Mutual Improvement Society. This filled Katherine, who did nothing particular, with great respect. She found a little knot of them consulting and arguing what they were to say in the next paper, and she was speechless with admiration. Inferior! Lady Jane did not think much of the Sliplin people. She had warned the girls in the days of her ascendency not to “mix themselves up” with the village folk, not to conduct themselves as if they belonged to the nobodies. But Lady Jane had never, Katherine felt sure, written an essay in her life. She had her name on the Committee of the University Extension centre at Sliplin, but she never attended a lecture. She it was who was inferior, she and her kind: if intellect counted for anything, surely, Katherine thought, the intellect was here. And then Dr. Burnet, came flying in, bringing a gust of fresh air with him. Though he had but a very short time to spare, he made his way to her through all the people who detained him. “I am glad to see you here; you don’t despise the village parties,” he said. “Despise them!--but I am not nearly good enough for them. I feel so small and so ignorant--they are all thinking of so many things--essays and criticisms and I don’t know what. It is they who should despise me.” “Oh, I don’t think very much of the essays--nor would you if you saw them,” Dr. Burnet said. “I tell you all,” said Miss Mildmay, “though you are so grand with your theories and so forth, it is the old-fashioned girls who know nothing about such nonsense that the gentlemen like best.” “The gentlemen--what gentlemen?” said Katherine, not at all comforted by this side of the question, and, indeed, not very clear what was meant. “Oh, don’t pretend to be a little fool,” said Miss Mildmay. She was quite anxious to promote what she considered to be Katherine’s two chances--the two strings she had to her bow--but to put up with this show of ignorance was too much for her. She went off angrily to where her companion sat, yawning a little over an entertainment which depended so entirely for its success upon whether you had someone nice to talk to or not. “Kate Tredgold worries me,” she said. “She pretends she knows nothing, when she is just as well up to it as either you or I.”