It was a great gift, surely, that with which he was endowed, but at the same time, like other precious endowments of Nature, it carried with it a great responsibility--perhaps greater than any one man should be asked to sustain, was what Mr. Eggston, the Nonconformist draper of Framsby High Street, remarked to his two assistants (male) when he had returned to the low level of his shop work, after gazing out at Mr. Kelton, who went by with Clara Gibson, of the Bank. (Mr. Kelton was the guest of the Gibsons of the Bank--the Gibsons of the Bank were said to be “very musical.”) Perhaps there was something in the Nonconformist judgment on this point, and perhaps there was also something in the view taken of the whole case of Mr. Kelton and his assumptions by the friends of Mr. Mozart Tutt, and crystallized into the one word “puppy!” At any rate, during the day (the concert was to begin at eight o’clock in the evening) the topic of the town was the quarrel--perhaps it should rather be called an artistic misunderstanding--between Mr. Tutt and Mr. Kelton; and of course it was inevitable that the action of Miss Wadhurst in coming forward to play the accompaniment when Mr. Tutt had felt himself insulted and retired from the discharge of that duty, was widely commented on. Some who took part in the discussion affirmed that it was rather extraordinary for a young woman, situated as she was, to place herself in a position of such prominence. Surely it would have shown better taste on her part if she had kept in the background. It was foolish for her to do anything that might have a tendency to attract attention to herself and to reawaken public interest in that other affair with which she had been connected. To be sure, it was not quite her fault, that other thing; but still, if she had made proper--even reasonable--enquiries before it happened she would not have been made a fool of. Oh, yes, it was a great pity that she had failed to learn her lesson at that time. And then an impartial chronicler cannot neglect the criticisms of The Families--the important but not impartial families who surrounded Framsby with a cincture made up of ten generations of stupidity. The Palings, the Hamptsons, the Whiteleafifes--these represented the gems in the girdle that enclosed Framsby, and they agreed that that Wadhurst young woman was showing herself to be all that they had feared she must be. “Of course there never was a question of our looking on her as one of ourselves; but still we thought it might be possible, after a year or two, when the thing was not so fresh in people’s minds... but the young woman has not shown herself to be duly penitent for having been made a fool of, and now she is actually going to appear on a platform--a public platform.... Oh, yes, it is quite as well that we made no move.”