nearly always went with her sister; she stood aloof from all the
small gaieties of the town; walked swiftly through its streets, and
repelled, frigidly and decisively, all offers, and they were not a
few, which had been made to her by the sons of the Fenmarket
tradesfolk. Fenmarket pronounced her 'stuck-up,' and having thus
labelled her, considered it had exhausted her. The very important
question, Whether there was anything which naturally stuck up?
Fenmarket never asked. It was a great relief to that provincial
little town in 1844, in this and in other cases, to find a word which
released it from further mental effort and put out of sight any
troublesome, straggling, indefinable qualities which it would
otherwise have been forced to examine and name. Madge was certainly
stuck-up, but the projection above those around her was not
artificial. Both she and her sister found the ways of Fenmarket were
not to their taste. The reason lay partly in their nature and partly
in their history.

Mrs Hopgood was the widow of the late manager in the Fenmarket branch
of the bank of Rumbold, Martin & Rumbold, and when her husband died
she had of course to leave the Bank Buildings. As her income was
somewhat straitened, she was obliged to take a small house, and she
was now living next door to the 'Crown and Sceptre,' the principal
inn in the town. There was then no fringe of villas to Fenmarket for
retired quality; the private houses and shops were all mixed
together, and Mrs Hopgood's cottage was squeezed in between the
ironmonger's and the inn. It was very much lower than either of its
big neighbours, but it had a brass knocker and a bell, and distinctly
asserted and maintained a kind of aristocratic superiority.

Mr Hopgood was not a Fenmarket man. He came straight from London to