'And I am sure I have heard Aunt Ada say that she wasn't a lady; and
Aunt Jane that she had all sorts of discreditable connections.'

'Come now, Gill, if you chatter so, how is mamma to get a word in
between?'

'I'm afraid we have all been hard on her, poor thing!'

'There now, mamma has done it, just like Aunt Emily!'

'Anybody would be poor who got killed in a glacier!'

'No, but one doesn't say poor when people are--nice.'

'When I said poor,' now put in Lady Merrifield, 'it was not so much
that I was thinking of her death as of her having come into a family
where nobody welcomed her, and I really do not suppose it was her
fault.'

'Moreover, she seemed to do very well without a welcome,' added Hal.

'Who is interrupting now?' cried Gillian, 'but was she a lady?'

'I never saw her, you know,' said the mother; 'but from all I ever
heard of her, I should think she was, and cleverer and more highly
educated than any of us.'

'Yes,' said Hal, 'that was the kind of pretension that exasperated them
all at Beechcroft, especially Uncle William.'