‘Of course you would. All the world, including the great shopkeepers, will be there. I, for one, would not miss the lecture on any account, though I expect no more edification than I shall get from observing Mrs. Fremantle looking suavely over the heads of the Polleys and Dadds, while every rustle of Mrs. Polley’s Sunday gown will deliver the challenge, “I pay my way. I have as good a right to be here as any of you. I can do without your custom if you like to take it away; my word! you will miss me more than I shall miss you. Besides, Oliver Constable is our man.” I say, Catherine, it cannot be that Oliver Constable is flirting with one of those Polley girls? People say so, you know. Now, I can stand a good deal, but one must stop somewhere, and I really could not swallow that. The Constables are my own relations, and Oliver and Fan have been educated like other people. Though they are eccentric, they are presentable, and don’t take advantage of kinship. But imagine what it would be to have Mrs. Polley claiming me for a family connection, when, of course, I should have to admit the claim, while her daughter addressed me as ‘cousin’. That would try my liberal-mindedness.’ Catherine showed herself a little startled when this suggestion was deliberately made to her, but she looked it steadily in the face. ‘Why not,’ she asked quietly a moment afterwards, ‘if the couple suit each other? Oliver Constable must know, so far as it refers to himself. Perhaps the Polleys are not so much worse than other girls.’ In making the last despondent reflection, she was influenced by the recollection of nieces of Mrs. Wright’s, whom Catherine Hilliard had encountered lately, and whom she was accustomed to style to herself ‘low-minded girls,’ after she found that they divided their time pretty equally between dressing, taking their meals, and playing lawn-tennis. ‘Are you liberal-minded, Louisa?’ Catherine began to speculate next.