The dressmaker dropped Mary’s frock upon her knees in the excitement of her feelings. There was more than curiosity involved. “To be sure,” she said. “To be sure!” going on with her own thoughts, “where should they come but to the Castle? and who should have them but his family? ’Lizabeth Bampfylde is an honest woman, but not even me, I wouldn’t trust the children to her. His children! though they would be hers too----” “What do you mean, Miss Price?” said Mrs. Pen, half offended; “are you going out of your senses? I tell you something about the Squire’s family, and you get into a way about it as if it could be anything to you.” Miss Price recovered her composure with a rapid effort, but her little pale countenance reddened. “Nothing to me, ma’am,” she said, with what she felt to be a proper pride. “But if Mr. John has children, they had a mother as well as a father; and there was a time when that was something to me.” “Oh!” cried the Vicar’s wife, “then you knew Mrs. John? tell me about her. She was a low girl, that is all I know.” “She was no low girl, whoever told you,” cried the little dressmaker. “She was one as folks were fond of, as fond as if she had been a princess. She was no more low than--I am; she was----” “Oh, I did not mean to offend you, Miss Price. Of course I know how respectable you are--but not the equal of the Squire, you know, or of----” Miss Price looked at the woman who had spoiled Mary’s frock. There she stood, limp, and faded, and genteel, with no capacity in her fingers and not much in her head, with a smile of conscious superiority yet condescension. Miss Price was not her equal. “Good Lord! as if I would be that useless,” she said to herself, “for all the money in the world! or to be as grand as the Queen!” But though she was at once exasperated and contemptuous, politeness and policy at once forbade her to say anything. She would not “set up her face to a lady,” even when so very unimpressive as Mrs. Pennithorne; and it did not become the dressmaker in the village to be openly scornful of the Vicar’s wife. She saved herself by taking up again with energy and devotion the scattered pins and the miserable little spoiled bodice of Mary’s frock. “I am glad you know about this girl,” said Mrs. Pen, satisfied to have subdued her opponent, “for I want so much to hear about her. One cannot get much information from a gentleman, Miss Price. They tell you, ‘Oh yes, she was a pretty creature!’ as if that is all you cared to know.” “It’s what tells most with the gentlemen, ma’am,” said Miss Price, recovering her composure. “Yes, that she was. I’ve looked at her many a time and said just the same to myself. ‘Well, you are a pretty creature!’ I don’t wonder if their heads get turned when they are as pretty as that; though it isn’t only the pretty ones that get their heads turned. The girls that I’ve had through my hands! and not one in ten that went through with the business and kept it up as it ought to be kept up.”