being a kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his wife's
indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was
in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older
men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young
men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought _them_
absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads
were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was
overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any meanness or injustice,
which seemed to arouse in her a Biblical passion of righteous fury.

A small meanness in another depressed her as much as if she had done it
herself. Once she had walked five miles to deliver some butter and
returned utterly dejected, not alone from fatigue, but because she had
been offered nothing to eat or drink after her long tramp. It would have
been useless to point out to her that she had gone on a purely business
errand. It was one of those small meannesses of which she was herself
incapable, and a proportion of warmth had died out of her belief.

"You know my sister Jane's son?" said a farmer's wife, who had stopped
her trap at the cottage to pick up a lidded wisket in which some
earthenware had been packed. "He's getting a good-looking young man and
he's all for bettering himself. Well, he went and got his photo taken at
Drayton and brought them in to show his mother. She was making jam at
the time, and she's not an easy tongue at the best o' times. 'What's
that?' she says; 'you don't mean to say that's a likeness o' thee? It
looks fool enough.' She says she never saw 'em again, he went straight
out and burnt 'em."

"He chose the wrong minit," said her husband beside her. "If he knew as
much about women as _I_ do, for instance."