“A pack of idiots--old women--tabbies with their claws always out, and not prize tabbies at that. I’ve heard all about them. The family of the village sawbones--the village attorney--a colonial clerk whose ability was assessed at four or five hundred a year--I have been properly coached on the whole crew--all rotters. But it’s the same way in every beggarly town like Framsby. It’s in the hands of half-a-dozen tabbies, and their whole aim is to keep out the nicest people--the best-looking girls and the best educated.” “They kept me out, at any rate. Perhaps they were right; if they began admitting farmers’ daughters into their sacred circle, where would its sacredness be? They kept me out as they had kept my poor mother out, and the very means that she had taken to have me recognized--the education that she insisted on my getting, the expensive frocks, the good furs-- real sables, mind, not musquash sables at forty pounds or rabbit-skin sables at thirty shillings, but real sables--these only caused the door to be more tightly closed against me; and my dear mother took it all so much to heart that she never raised her head afterwards. That was why she made me accept the first offer I received from some one who would take me away from this neighbourhood.” “You should not have allowed yourself to be forced, mother or no mother. A girl like you!” “She was dying. She said to me: ‘Will you let me go down to the grave without having my one request granted? I have done everything for you--will you not do this one thing for me so that I may close my eyes in peace?’” He shook his head. Then he looked at her, but he only saw the back of her head; she had turned away her face and her eyes were on the ground. He knew that they were full of tears. They walked on slowly for some time, and then he took his right hand out of the pocket of his jacket and let it drop till it was on a level with her left. Very gently his fingers closed over hers for a moment--only a moment. “I was wrong,” he said. “There was nothing else left for you to do; but it was rough on you. Well, well; you have had a bad year of it--that’s all, but you might have had a bad fifty years. It’s odd how the rights of a story do get about somehow, whatever people may say. Now that gossipy old woman, Mrs. Pearce, was only too glad to tell me all about you when you went away that day we met; and when I said that it was your own fault--that it was a shame, but you had made your own bed--she took your part and said that if duty to a mother was a fault, then you were to blame. She holds that a girl should do just what a mother tells her to do in all matters, but especially as regards marriage. I don’t. But then I fancy I miss my gear pretty frequently when I try to express myself on most matters. I’m all for independence of thought and action. That’s why they presented me with the Fellowship at the University.”