"But I always called them Uncle William and Aunt Lucy." Lady Flower tapped her foot impatiently. "I know that, and that is why I want you to break yourself of the habit of calling them uncle and aunt. They are good and worthy people, but you are going to lead quite a different kind of life nowadays, and it wouldn't do...." Lady Flower hesitated. Worldly woman though she was, she hesitated almost shamefacedly to tell this child gazing up at her with astonished eyes that Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus were common. She decided to let her granddaughter learn gradually to be ashamed of the lowly couple who had watched over her from infancy to girlhood. "You have my hands, and you have your father's eyes," said Lady Flower, changing the subject. "And my mother's hair, Aunt Lucy said." "Yes, and now I think you'd better go and take off your things. We'll go shopping to-morrow, and when you're equipped I'll take you myself to the school where you're going to learn...." Once again Lady Flower broke off. She had been on the point of saying: "To forget all about your life in London." Perhaps if she had known that Mary had lived in a basement she would not have been able to refrain, for life in a basement would have seemed to Lady Flower unimaginably squalid. "Go shopping again?" echoed Mary in amazement. "Why, all these last days I've been shopping with Aunt Lucy." "Yes, I did not want you to arrive in rags." Mary found that there were many other things her grandmother did not want before she had been long in her new home. Accustomed to have her ordinary behavior regarded with admiration and approval by Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, she could not understand that to her grandmother her manners appeared uncouth, her habit of speech common. She was continually being reproved for the way she held her knife and fork, or for using a spoon naturally, that is by putting the narrow end into her mouth first. "But if I drink my soup sideways I make a noise," she expostulated. "And Aunt Lucy--I mean Mrs. Fawcus told me not to make a noise." "I do not make a noise, do I?" Grandmamma asked with raised eyebrows. Mary longed to tell her that she did make a noise sometimes and that, when she was drinking, in the silence of the large dining-room it sounded like pigeons cooing far away. "And don't keep pulling up your stockings like that," Grandmamma would say. "But one of them keeps coming down." "In that case go to Adèle and ask her to tighten your garter." "But it's too tight already," Mary objected. "When I undress you can see all crinkles where it was round my leg." "And don't argue with people older than yourself," Grandmamma would conclude.