other people! If she had not so
trampled upon me in my ignorance; and with such a sense of triumph!
I was never so educated in my life by a visitor. The amount of
information she imparted in half an hour--how many months it would
have served the purpose of a well-bred woman! And her pride in her
family--were there ever such little brothers and sisters outside a
royal family! And her devotion to her father, and remembrance of
her mother. I shall go to see her, and be received, I suppose,
somewhere between the griddle and the churn."

As Pansy was driven home, feeling under herself for the first time
the elasticity of a perfect carriage, she experimented with her
posture. "This carriage is not to be sat in in the usual way," she
said. And indeed it was not. In the family rockaway there was
constant need of muscular adjustment to different shocks at
successive moments; here muscular surrender was required: a
comfortable collapse--and there you were!

Trouble awaited her at home. Owing to preoccupation with her visit
she had, before setting out, neglected much of her morning work.
She had especially forgotten the hungry multitude of her
dependants. The children, taking advantage of her absence, had fed
only themselves. As a consequence, the trustful lives around the
house had suffered a great wrong, and they were attempting to
describe it to each other. The instant Pansy descended from the
carriage the ducks, massed around the doorsteps, discovered her,
and with frantic outcry and outstretched necks ran to find out what
it all meant. The signal was taken up by other species and genera.
In the stable lot the calves responded as the French horn end of
the orchestra; and the youngest of her little brothers, who had
climbed into a fruit tree as a lookout for her return, in
scrambling hurriedly down, dropped to the earth with the boneless
thud of an opossum.

Pansy walked straight up to her room, heeding nothing, leaving a
wailing wake. She locked herself in. It was an hour before dinner
and she needed all those moments for herself.

She sat on the edge of her bed and new light brought new
wretchedness. It was not, after all, quantity of information that
made the chief difference between herself and Dent's mother. The
other things, all the other things--would she ever, ever acquire
them! Finally the picture rose before her of how the footman had
looked as he had held the carriage door open for her, and th