accustomed. There was no cause, because one was kind and wise, to eat
with badly cleaned silver, unless the parlour-maid whose office it was to
clean it was unwell. In such a case, if the extra work entailed by her
illness would throw too much on the shoulders of the other servants, Mrs.
Assheton would willingly clean the silver herself, rather than that it
should appear dull and tarnished. Her formalism, such as it was, was
perfectly simple and sincere. She would, without any very poignant regret
or sense of martyrdom, had her very comfortable income been cut down to a
tenth of what it was, have gone to live in a four-roomed cottage with one
servant. But she would have left that four-roomed cottage at once for
even humbler surroundings had she found that her straitened circumstances
did not permit her to keep it as speckless and _soignée_ as was her
present house in Sussex Square.

This achievement of having lived for nearly sixty years so decorously may
perhaps be a somewhat finer performance than it sounds, but Mrs. Assheton
brought as her contribution to life in general a far finer offering than
that, for though she did not propose to change her ways and manner of
life herself, she was notoriously sympathetic with the changed life of
the younger generation, and in consequence had the confidence of young
folk generally. At this moment she was enjoying the fruits of her liberal
attitude in the volubility of her son Morris, who sat at the end of the
table opposite to her. His volubility was at present concerned with his
motor-car, in which he had arrived that afternoon.

"Darling mother," he was saying, "I really was frightened as to whether
you would mind. I couldn't help remembering how you received Mr.
Taynton's proposal that you should go for a drive in his car. Don't you
remember, Mr. Taynton? Mother's nose _did_ go in the air. It's no use
denying it. So I thought, perhaps, that she wouldn't like my having one.