"A New England village, yes; but the lines are drawn just as hard and fast there as they are in a city. You have to live in the West to understand what equality is, and in a purely American population, like this. You've got plenty of independence, in New England, but you haven't got equality, and we _have_,--or used to have." Mrs. Burton added the final words with apparent conscience. "Just saved your distance, Polly," said her husband. "We haven't got equality now, any more than we've got buffalo. I don't believe we ever had buffalo in this section; but we did have deer once; and when I was a boy here, venison was three cents a pound, and equality cheaper yet. When they cut off the woods the venison and the equality disappeared; they always do when the woods are cut off." "There's enough of it left for all practical purposes, and Mrs. Saunders moves in the first circles of Pymantoning," said Mrs. Burton. "When she _does_ move," said Burton. "She doesn't _like_ to move." "Well, she has the greatest taste, and if you can get her to do anything for you your fortune's made. But it's a favor. She'll take a thing that you've got home from the city, and that you're frantic about, it's so bad, and smile over it a little, and touch it here and there, and it comes out a miracle of style and becomingness. It's like magic." "She _was_ charming," said Ludlow, in dreamy reminiscence. "_Isn't_ she?" Mrs. Burton demanded. "And her daughter gets all her artistic talent from her. Mrs. Saunders _is_ an artist, though I don't suppose you like to admit it of a dressmaker." "Oh, yes, I do," said Ludlow. "I don't see why a man or woman who drapes the human figure in stuffs, isn't an artist as well as the man or woman who drapes it in paint or clay." "Well, that's sense," Mrs. Burton began. "She didn't know you had any, Ludlow," her husband explained. Mrs. Burton did not regard him. "If she had any ambition she would be anything--just like some other lazy-boots," and now she gave the large, dangling congress gaiter of her husband a little push with the point of her slipper, for purposes of identification, as the newspapers say. "But the only ambition she's got is for her daughter, and she _is_ proud of her, and she would spoil her if she could get up the energy. She dotes on her, and Nie is fond of her mother, too. Do you think she can ever do anything in art?" "If she were a boy, I should say yes; as she's a girl, I don't know," said Ludlow. "The chances are against her." "Nature's against her, too," said Burton. "_Human_ nature ought to be for her, then," said Mrs. Burton. "If she were your sister what should you wish her to be?" she asked Ludlow. "I should wish her to be"--Ludlow thought a moment and then concluded--"happily married." "Well, that's a shame!" cried Mrs. Burton. Her husband laughed, while he knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the edge of his chair-seat. "Rough on the holy estate of matrimony, Polly."