"I never believed a word of it!" said the wife of the Master
Builder, as she sat in her fine drawing room and fanned herself
with a great fan made of peacock's feathers. She was very
handsomely dressed, far muore like a fine Court dame than the wife
of a simple citizen. Her comnpanion was a very pretty girl of about
nineteen, whose abundant chestnut hair was dressed after a
fashionable mode, although she refused to have it frizzed over her
head as her mother's was, and would have preferred to dress it
quite simply. She wished she might have plain clothes suitable to
her station, instead of being tricked out as though she were a fine
lady. But her mother ruled her with a rod of iron, and girls in
those days had not thought of rising in rebellion.

The Master Builder's wife considered that she had gentle blood in
her veins, as her grandfather had been a country squire who was
ruined in the civil war, so that his family sank into poverty. Of
late she had done all in her power to get her neighbours to accord
her the title of Madam Mason, which she extorted from her servants,
and which was given to her pretty generally now, although as much
in mockery, it must be confessed, as in respect of her finery. She
did not look a very happy woman, in spite of all the grandeur about
her. She had frightened away her simpler neighbours by her airs of
condescension and by the splendour of her house, and yet she could
not yet see any way of inducing other and finer folks to come and
see her. Sometimes her husband brought in a rich patron and his
wife to look at the fine room, and examnine the furniture in it,
and these persons would generally be mighty civil to her whilst
they stayed; but then they did not come to see her, but only in the
way of business. It was agreeable to be able to repeat what my lord
this or my lady that said about the cabinets and chairs; but after