through every suggestion, every shade of fortune, which evidently
included indeed lots of bad luck as well as of good, declining even
toward Mr. Mudge and his bland firm thrift, and ascending, in wild
signals and rocket-flights, almost to within hail of her highest
standard. So from month to month she went on with them all, through a
thousand ups and downs and a thousand pangs and indifferences. What
virtually happened was that in the shuffling herd that passed before her
by far the greater part only passed--a proportion but just appreciable
stayed. Most of the elements swam straight away, lost themselves in the
bottomless common, and by so doing really kept the page clear. On the
clearness therefore what she did retain stood sharply out; she nipped and
caught it, turned it over and interwove it.




CHAPTER VI


She met Mrs. Jordan when she could, and learned from her more and more
how the great people, under her gentle shake and after going through
everything with the mere shops, were waking up to the gain of putting
into the hands of a person of real refinement the question that the shop-
people spoke of so vulgarly as that of the floral decorations. The
regular dealers in these decorations were all very well; but there was a
peculiar magic in the play of taste of a lady who had only to remember,
through whatever intervening dusk, all her own little tables, little
bowls and little jars and little other arrangements, and the wonderful
thing she had made of the garden of the vicarage. This small domain,
which her young friend had never seen, bloomed in Mrs. Jordan's discourse