well-lighted rooms, full of comfort, shadowless because of the glare of
much gas. She is not vulgar, just the reverse--she is a thorough lady, but
she is not of the country and its traditions. She is the city and the
suburb transplanted to the midst of corn, and grass, and cattle. She has
her maid, skilled in the toilet, her carriage and pair and pony carriage,
grooms, footmen, just exactly as she would have done had she brought her
magnificent dowry to a villa at Sydenham.

In the season, with her daughter, she goes to town, and drives daily in
the park, just the same as to-day she has driven through the leaf-strewn
country-lane to the market town. They go also to the sea-side, and now and
then to the Continent. They are, of course, invited to the local balls,
and to many of the best houses on more private occasions. The
ramifications of finance do not except the proudest descendants of the
Crusaders, and the 'firm' has its clients even among them. Bonnets come
down from Madame Louise, boxes of novels from Mudie's; 'Le Follet' is read
in the original, and many a Parisian romance as well. Visitors are
continually coming and going--the carriage is perpetually backwards and
forwards to the distant railway station. Friends come to the shooting, the
hunting, the fishing; there is never any lack of society.

The house is full of servants, and need be, to wait upon these people.
Now, in former days, and not such a great while since, the best of
servants came from the country. Mistresses sought for them, and mourned
when, having imbibed town ways and town independence, they took their
departure to 'better' themselves. But that is a thing of the past; it is
gone with the disappearance of the old style of country life. Servant
girls in farmhouses when young used to have a terribly hard life: hard
work, hard fare, up early of a morning, stone flags under foot by day,
bare boards under foot upstairs, small pay, and hard words too often. But