They were always conscious of the fact that they were the daughters of a once eminent Dulham minister; but beside this unanswerable claim to the respect of the First Parish, they were aware that their mother’s social position was one of superior altitude. Madam Dobin’s grandmother was a Greenaple of Boston. In her younger days she had often visited her relatives, the Greenaples and Hightrees, and in seasons of festivity she could relate to a select and properly excited audience her delightful experiences of town life. Nothing could be finer than her account of having taken tea at Governor Clovenfoot’s, on Beacon Street, in company with an English lord, who was indulging himself in a brief vacation from his arduous duties at the Court of St. James. “He exclaimed that he had seldom seen in England so beautiful and intelligent a company of ladies,” Madam Dobin would always say in conclusion. “He was decorated with the blue ribbon of the Knights of the Garter.” Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda thought for many years that this famous blue ribbon was tied about the noble gentleman’s leg. One day they even discussed the question openly; Miss Dobin placing the decoration at his knee, and Miss Lucinda locating it much lower down, according to the length of the short gray socks with which she was familiar. “You have no imagination, Lucinda,” the elder sister replied impatiently. “Of course, those were the days of small-clothes and long silk stockings!”—whereat Miss Lucinda was rebuked, but not persuaded. “I wish that my dear girls could have the outlook upon society which fell to my portion,” Madam Dobin sighed, after she had set these ignorant minds to rights, and enriched them by communicating the final truth about the blue ribbon. “I must not chide you for the absence of opportunities, but if our cousin Harriet Greenaple were only living, you would not lack enjoyment or social education.” Madam Dobin had now been dead a great many years. She seemed an elderly woman to her daughters some time before she left them; they thought later that she had really died comparatively young, since their own years had come to equal the record of hers. When they visited her tall white tombstone in the orderly Dulham burying-ground, it was a strange thought to both the daughters that they were older women than their mother had been when she died. To be sure, it was the fashion to appear older in her day,—they could remember the sober effect of really youthful married persons in cap and frisette; but, whether they owed it to the changed times or to their own qualities, they felt no older themselves than ever they had. Beside upholding the ministerial dignity of their father, they were obliged to give a lenient sanction to the ways of the world for their mother’s sake; and they combined the two duties with reverence and impartiality.