merchant who paid his way, and left a comfortable fortune behind him,
fit to associate with any lady of the land? Mrs. Bertram, indeed! A nice
way she has treated us all. It isn't every newcomer we Northbury folks
would take up. We hold ourselves high, that we do. Now, what's the
matter, Maria?"

"We didn't hold ourselves high about Mrs. Bertram," replied Miss Peters.
"It isn't fair to say that we did. We all rushed up to call before she
had the carpets well down. I did say, Martha, and you may remember too
that I said it, for you were helping me to the tail of the salmon at the
time, and I remarked that there was little or nothing to eat on it,
you'll remember that I said to you: 'let them put their carpets straight
at least.' But you wouldn't--you were all agog to be off, when you saw
that Mrs. Gorman Stanley had gone up there in her new bonnet, with the
red and yellow poppies--the bonnet you know that she said she got from
London."

"Which she didn't," snapped Mrs. Butler; "for I saw those identical
poppies in Perry's shop on the quay. Well, well, Maria, I may have been
a bit hasty in rushing after those who didn't want me, but the result
would have been all the same. Maria, there's only one solution of the
way we have been treated by that proud, stuck-up, conceited body. Maria,
she doesn't pay her way."

Miss Peters rolled her eyes with a quick dart at her sister.

"They do say she's very close in the kitchen," she remarked; "and the
butcher told Susan that they only go in for New Zealand."

Mrs. Butler rose from her seat, to express more markedly her disgust for