Agneta was not likely, even if fortune in the person of her Aunt Julia favoured her present wishes, to stay long enough at Copley Grange Farm for yeoman life to pall upon her. And when she was wearied in the least, she took refuge—the power of changing her place when and how she liked was another allurement to her—with her own and her brothers’ friends at Friarton Mill. Agneta could not draw the nice lines of distinction which were so skilfully defined by the magnates of Friarton. She was blind enough in her youthful obtuseness not to see magnates in the town. What was the great difference between the master of a grammar school who taught Latin or mathematics, the doctor who felt pulses, the old established family solicitor and banker who drew out wills and leases and counted sovereigns, even the vicar, who wrote sermons and took a class in the Sunday-school, and Oliver Constable, who ruled over working-men indeed, instead of boys, clerks, and curates, but who had been at Oxford with her brothers and who lived in such a perfect old place as Friarton Mill? In what respect was Oliver Constable’s sister, who had been educated in good schools at home and abroad, very inferior to the other ladies in the neighbourhood, whom, in her heart of hearts, Agneta Stanhope appearing so humble in that innocent youth—of which at the same time arrogance is perhaps the commoner immature accompaniment—never dreamt of reckoning her own equals? Agneta was actually disposed to put more weight on the line of yeomen, from which the Constables had sprung, than on the fashionable London doctor, who was the father of one of the master’s wives, or on the gallant major in the line from whom another lady claimed descent. Agneta showed herself extremely perverse where the best houses in Friarton were concerned. To her there was no particular goodness about them; and they had not the glamour of the farm and mill-houses. The Friarton drawing-rooms, from Mrs. Hilliard’s downwards, were only more or less sorry reflections of the drawing-room at home, they were not at all like the delicious little parlours—all chimney-corners and cupboards, at Copley Grange Farm and Friarton Mill. Agneta was just a trifle haughty and reserved when Harry took her among the professional people in Friarton, and all the time she was as gay as a lark, and as playful as a kitten, at Friarton Mill. She did not emulate Harry in winning every heart. She piqued the Friarton ladies by her neglect and incapacity for measuring their titles to respect. Mrs. Hilliard and her cousin Catherine formed the only exceptions. Mrs. Hilliard laughed at Agneta’s preferences, and Catherine simply held Agneta as a big baby fit to rank with the overgrown school boy her brother.