“No, no,” said Mr. Woodburn, “I don’t like that sort of women’s subterfuges, to get out of a disagreeable invitation—they are little better than falsehoods. I will tell you now how it will be. It will be a very pleasant and unique affair out in the grounds—they are very pleasant grounds—and you will see, Mrs. Heritage won’t preach a single word. She means to do the kind and restoring thing. We will all go, and be jolly.” “Jolly!” “Oh, dear father!” “Oh, dear husband!” resounded all round Mr. Woodburn from the ladies. “What an idea! Jolly at a Friends’ tea-drinking!” Even sobersided Ann, as her father called her, was excessively merry at her father’s notion of a pleasant party. “Why, dear father,” said Ann, “though I admit that the Friends are very estimable people, one cannot call them entertaining. I think they are the dullest of people.” “By no means,” said Mr. Woodburn; “not half so dull as your genuine aristocracy. Now, in my younger days, I spent a good deal of time in London. I had introductions to much high aristocratic society, through my neighbour, Lord Manvers, and I must say that duller society I never was in.” “Oh, no! that is impossible,” said Letty, all wonder. “Why, the aristocracy have all sorts of amusements. In the country, hunting and racing. In town, theatres, operas, concerts; music and dancing, and the finest singing, at their own parties. Their London season is a perfect round and whirl of pleasures, according to all that I ever heard or read.” “But I am not talking,” said Mr. Woodburn, “of their pleasures and amusements; I am talking of their society. They give you good dinners and good wine, I grant you, and you have all that you say—music, and dancing, and fine singing. You have great crowds of fine and titled people of whom you learn to know nothing but their fine clothes, and fine jewels, and fine outsides. At their more select and domestic parties—dinner-parties, say—all is very outwardly agreeable, polite, and even, to a casual eye, unassuming, for such great people; but, my dear girls, I tell you that, notwithstanding, aristocratic society is the dullest of all society. Spite of that seeming ease and non-pretence, there is a world of real resting upon their own self-consequence and greatness of station. Try to break a little through that soft and shining surface by a little of that familiarity which is quite allowable in the middle ranks of life, and you will soon feel that there is an invisible but not impalpable division betwixt you and them. It is what a clear glass window must be to a bird that flies against it, thinking it air. You cannot get beyond a specious, arm’s-length acquaintance with these apparently so modest and pleasant people.