"I didn't mean HIS father was a ploughman! That is impossible!
Besides, I heard him call that very respectable person MOTHER! She
is not a ploughman's wife, but evidently a lady of the middle
class."

Christina did not count herself or her people to belong to the
middle class. How it was it is not quite easy to say--perhaps the
tone of implied contempt with which the father spoke of the lower
classes, and the quiet negation with which the mother would allude
to shopkeepers, may have had to do with it--but the young people all
imagined themselves to belong to the upper classes! It was a pity
there was no title in the family--but any of the girls might well
marry a coronet! There were indeed persons higher than they; a duke
was higher; the queen was higher--but that was pleasant! it was nice
to have a few to look up to!

On anyone living in a humble house, not to say a poor cottage, they
looked down, as the case might be, with indifference or patronage;
they little dreamed how, had she known all about them, the
respectable person in the cottage would have looked down upon THEM!
At the same time the laugh in which they now indulged was not
altogether one of amusement; it was in part an effort to avenge
themselves of a certain uncomfortable feeling of rebuke.

"I will tell you my theory, Mercy!" Christina went on. "The lady is
the widow of an Indian officer--perhaps a colonel. Some of their
widows are left very poor, though, their husbands having been in the
service of their country, they think no small beer of themselves!
The young man has a military air which he may have got from his