We had gone to dinner at the Grangers’ merely to please Mrs. Blodgett, for we mutually agreed that in the country formal dinners were a weariness of the flesh; and I presume that with you, as with me, this general objection of ours was greatly strengthened when we found Mrs. Polhemus among the guests. It is always painful to me to be near her, and her dislike of you is obvious enough to make me sure that her presence is equally disagreeable to you. It is a strange warp and woof life weaves, that I owe to one for whom we both feel such repulsion the most sympathetic, the tenderest conversation I have ever had with you. I was talking with Miss Granger, and thus did not hear the beginning of my mother’s girds at you; but Agnes, who sat on my left, told me later that, as usual, Mrs. Polhemus set out to bait you by remarks superficially inoffensive, but covertly planned to embarrass or sting. The first thing which attracted my notice was her voice distinctly raised, as if she wished the whole table to listen, and in fact loud enough to make Miss Granger stop in the middle of a sentence and draw our attention to the speaker. “—sound very well,” Mrs. Polhemus was saying, “and are to be expected from any one who strives to be thought romantically sentimental.” “I did not know,” you replied in a low voice, “that a ‘romantically sentimental’ nature was needed to produce belief in honesty.” “It is easy enough to talk the high morals of honesty,” retorted your assailant, “and I suppose, Miss Walton, that for you it is not difficult to live up to your conversational ideals. But we unfortunate earthly creatures, who cannot achieve so rarefied a life, dare not make a parade of our ethical natures. The saintly woman is an enormously difficult rôle to play since miracles went out of style.” “Oh, leave us an occasional ideal, Mrs. Polhemus,” laughed a guest. “I for one wish that fairy rings and genii were still the vogue.” “But we have some kinds of miracles,” asserted Mrs. Granger. “Remember the distich,— ‘God still works wonders now and then: Behold! two lawyers, honest men!’” “With all due deference to Miss Walton’s championing of absolute perfection,” continued my mother, with a cleverly detached manner, to veil what lay back of the sneer, “I find it much easier to accept the miracle of an honest lawyer than that of an absolutely uncattish woman,”—a speech which, like most of those of Mrs. Polhemus, drew a laugh from the men. “That’s because you don’t know Miss Walton!” exclaimed Agnes warmly, evidently fretted by such conduct towards you. “On the contrary,” answered my mother, speaking coolly and evenly, “I presume I have known Miss Walton longer and better than any one else in this room; and I remember when her views of honesty were such that her ideal was personified by a pair of embezzlers.”