‘You have very little pity to spare for anybody out of a book, it appears to me,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, with cheerful absence of concern. ‘Your little foible is that you are extremely hard-hearted. I am not—at least nobody can refuse to give me the credit of good nature. I am really sorry for Fan in the collapse of the dream of her life, if she would only believe me, and if she would not make herself so ridiculous by her fixed determination to be a lady. Of course the determination defeats itself. She is not and never will be a lady—conventionally, though she is well enough in her irregular way, if she would relax her resolution—which she will not do so that I must laugh or die,’ finished Mrs. Hilliard, not looking like dying. ‘I had quite a different idea of Oliver Constable, however,’ said Catherine, returning voluntarily to the main thread of the conversation, but not speaking as if this or any other baffled idea mattered much. ‘I never thought him mercenary——’ ‘Wait a little,’ interrupted Mrs. Hilliard, with unquenched vivacity; ‘my hero is not mercenary. He is the most disinterested, unselfish of mortals, though he is a “sair saunt” to Fan. He has come back among us as the self-appointed champion of the millers and advocate of the bakers. He is to be the defender of the tradespeople—the last version of St. George in Friarton.’ ‘But who is harming the millers, or what need have the bakers of an advocate?’ asked Catherine, in a puzzled tone. ‘I thought the tradespeople here were particularly prosperous—much more so than any other class. I am sure they are not deficient in a sense of their own merits and in a capacity for bringing them into the foreground.’ ‘I agree with you entirely. But I suppose their prosperity is their bane in one sense, and that our taking them at their own word goes to prove that we are a pair of would be, bloated aristocrats. But it is a fact that I never go into Polley’s or Dadd’s shop without having a distinct perception that Mrs. Polley and old and young Dadd are thinking to themselves, “You need not look down on us; we are every bit as good as you are. We have as early spring chickens and lamb on our tables as you have on yours. We could buy you out any day” (and I dare say they could, if the Meadows were to sell). “We know our place, so far as being civil in return for your custom; but don’t try to turn up your nose at us”—as if my nose would do anything save turn up—to her Majesty the Queen on her throne in the House of Lords. Catherine, you are aware of its infirmity?’ exclaimed Mrs. Hilliard, parenthetically, tip-tilting the refractory member still farther with her middle finger in the most comical manner. ‘“Don’t go to think of trampling _us_ under your feet,” which, as Sairey Gamp used to say, “Betsy Prig will take her Bible oath” is the last exercise she would seek to take for the mere pleasure of the thing.’