She went once, soon after she came among us, to comfort a lady in the
neighbourhood who had lost a baby at its birth.

"It is sad that you should lose your child," Ideala said to her; "but
you are better off than I am, for I never knew what it was to be a
mother."

She would have thought it a privilege to have experienced even the
sorrows of maternity.

Talking about the people, she told me: "They draw such nice
distinctions. They speak of 'a lady' and 'a real lady.' A 'real lady'
is a person who gives no trouble. If Mrs. Vanbrugh wants anything from
the butcher, and he has already sent to her house once that day, she
does not expect him to send again; she sends to him--and she is 'a real
lady.' Mrs. Stanton is also thoughtful, but she is something more; she
is sociable and kind, and talks to them all in a friendly way, just as
if they were human beings; and she is something more than 'a real
lady'--she's 'a real nice lady.'

"Do you know Mrs. Polter at the fish-shop? What a fine-looking woman
she is! Middle-aged, intelligent, and a very good specimen of her
class, I should think. She has eight children already, and would
consider the ninth a further blessing. Her husband is a good-looking
man, too, and most devoted. In fact, they are quite an ideal pair with
their eight children and their fish-shop. He had to go to Yarmouth the
other day to buy bloaters, and while he was away she went by the five
o'clock train every morning to choose the day's supply of fish for the
shop, and he was quite unhappy about it. He was afraid she would