When she looked up at Rachel and benevolently nodded to her, she saw a girl of line character, absolutely trustworthy, very devoted, very industrious, very capable, intelligent, cheerful--in fact, a splendid girl, a girl to be enthusiastic about! But such a mere girl! A girl with so much to learn! So pathetically young and inexperienced and positive and sure of herself! The looseness of her limbs, the unconscious abrupt freedom of her gestures, the waviness of her auburn hair, the candour of her glance, the warmth of her indignation against injustice and dishonesty, the capricious and sensitive flowings of blood to her smooth cheeks, the ridiculous wise compressings of her lips, the rise and fall of her rich and innocent bosom--these phenomena touched Mrs. Maldon and occasionally made her want to cry. Thought she: "_I_ was never so young as that at twenty-two! At twenty-two I had had Mary!" The possibility that in spite of having had Mary (who would now have been fifty, but for death) she had as a fact been approximately as young as that at twenty-two did not ever present itself to the waning and peculiar old lady. She was glad that she, a mature and profoundly experienced woman, in full possession of all her faculties, was there to watch over the development of the lovable, affectionate, and impulsive child. IV "Oh! Here's the paper, Mrs. Maldon," said Rachel, as, turning away to leave the room, she caught sight of the extra special edition of the _Signal_, which lay a pale green on the dark green of the Chesterfield. Mrs. Maldon answered placidly-- "When did you bring it in? I never heard the boy come. But my hearing's not quite what it used to be, that's true. Open it for me, my dear. I can't stretch my arms as I used to." She was one of the few women in the Five Towns who deigned to read a newspaper regularly, and one of the still fewer who would lead the miscellaneous conversation of drawing-rooms away from domestic chatter and discussions of individualities, to political and municipal topics and even toward general ideas. She seldom did more than mention a topic and then express a hope for the best, or explain that this phenomenon was "such a pity," or that phenomenon "such a good thing," or that about another phenomenon "one really didn't know what to think." But these remarks sufficed to class her apart among her sex as "a very up-to-date old lady, with a broad outlook upon the world," and to inspire sundry other ladies with a fearful respect for her masculine intellect and judgment. She was aware of her superiority, and had a certain kind disdain for the increasing number of women who took in a daily picture-paper, and who, having dawdled over its illustrations after breakfast, spoke of what they had seen in the "newspaper." She would not allow that a picture-paper was a newspaper.