22 TALES OF PINK AND SILK. 



" By the way, I met Lady Millingham in Hazleford this 

 afternoon, and she told me she had actually called on the 

 Cuthberts, and that she was delighted with them. Mrs. 

 Cuthbert, she declared to be a charming lady, Mr. Tom a 

 handsome, gentlemanly young fellow, and Miss Ethel a perfect 

 dear." 



" Good heavens ! " ejaculated the two Miss Styles together. 



" I told her, m}^ dears, that we heard they were a very 

 common lot, and that it was whispered that the girl was not 

 respectable." 



" I am sure she is not, the horrid little cat ! " exclaimed 

 Gertrude, with the visions still before her eyes of a chesnut 

 mare and its chesnut-haired burden skimming like a swallow 

 over Elmsley brook. " But wait, my love ; listen. Who do 

 you think she met at Ivy Cottage drinking tea Avith this 

 amiable famil}^ ? " 



"Have no idea," said Enid. "Bates, the butcher from 

 Hazleford, the sweep, those two girls in Halford's shop, or 

 Mrs. Diggle who lives in the back lane." 



" You may sneer, Enid, but those people mean to force 

 their way into decent society somehow. Lady Millingham 

 found Canon and Mrs. Wemyss, and Mr. and Mrs. Mollineux 

 there ; and Lady Eleanor Bertie and her two daughters came 

 just as she was leaving. Now, did you ever know such 

 nonsense ? Why can't they keep these people in their proper 

 place, instead of lifting them out of the mire in the way they 

 are doing ? " 



" Fancy the Countess and her daughters callmg on them ! " 

 exclaimed Gertrude. " They never called here, and not one 

 of us have ever been inside the ToAvers." 



"It's disgraceful, I call it," said Enid. 



Yet all this fuss was simply because some really nice people 

 had called upon a widow lady and her two children, who 

 had not long before come to live at Ivy Cottage, which was 



