company, to begin with; and Louisa, with her cleverness and her salary
and her general air of indifference and prosperity, raised no questions.
Besides, Louisa was married.

But Juliana, toiling from morning till night for her eighty pounds a
year; Juliana, painful and persistent, growing into middle-age without a
hope, Juliana was an incarnate reproach, a perpetual monument to the
folly of Tollington Moon. Juliana disturbed her dream.

But nobody else disturbed it, for nobody ever came to their half of the
house in Camden Street North. Louisa used to come and go in a brief
perfunctory manner; but Louisa had married the Greek professor and gone
away for good, and her friends at St. Sidwell's were not likely to waste
their time in cultivating Juliana and Mrs. Moon. The thing had been tried
by one or two of the younger teachers who went in for all-round
self-development and were getting up the minor virtues. But they had met
with no encouragement and they had ceased to come. Then nobody came; not
even the doctor or the clergyman. The two ladies were of one mind on that
point; it was convenient for them to ignore their trifling ailments,
spiritual or bodily. And as soon as they saw that the world renounced
them they adopted a lofty tone and said to each other that they had
renounced the world. For they were proud, Mrs. Moon especially so.
Tollington Moon had married slightly, ever so slightly beneath him, the
Moons again marking a faint descent from the standing of the Quinceys.
But the old lady had completely identified herself, not only with the
Moons, but with the higher branch, which she always spoke of as "_my_
family." In fact she had worn her connection with the Quinceys as a
feather in her cap so long that the feather had grown, as it were, into
an entire bird of paradise. And once a bird of paradise, always a bird of
paradise, though it had turned on the world a somewhat dilapidated tail.