studiously minded; the
billiard table was always speckless of dust, no tip was ever missing from
any cue, and the cigarette boxes and match-stands were always kept
replenished. In the dining-room the silver was resplendent, until the
moment when before dessert the cloth was withdrawn, and showed a rosewood
table that might have served for a mirror to Narcissus.

Mrs. Assheton, until her only surviving son Morris had come to live with
her some three months ago on the completion of his four years at
Cambridge, had been alone, but even when she was alone this ceremony of
drawing the cloth and putting on the dessert and wine had never been
omitted, though since she never took either, it might seem to be a
wasted piece of routine on the part of the two noiseless parlourmaids.
But she did not in the least consider it so, for just as she always
dressed for dinner herself with the same care and finish, whether she was
going to dine alone or whether, as tonight, a guest or two was dining
with her, as an offering, so to speak, on the altar of her own
self-respect, so also she required self-respect and the formality that
indicated it on the part of those who ministered at her table, and
enjoyed such excellent wages. This pretty old-fashioned custom had always
been the rule in her own home, and her husband had always had it
practised during his life. And since then--his death had occurred some
twenty years ago--nothing that she knew of had happened to make it less
proper or desirable. Kind of heart and warm of soul though she was, she
saw no reason for letting these excellent qualities cover any slackness
or breach of observance in the social form of life to which she had been
accustomed. There was no cause, because one was kind and wise, to eat
with badly cleaned silver, unless the parlour-maid whose office it was to
clean it was unwell. In such a case, if the extra work entailed by her
illness would throw too much on the shoulders of the other servants, Mrs.
Assheton would willingly clean the silver herself, rather than that it
should appear dull and tarnished. Her formalism, such as it was, was
perfectly simple and sincere. She would, without any very poignant regret
or sense of martyrdom, had her very comfortable income been cut down to a
tenth of what it was, have gone to live in a four-roomed cottage with one
servant. But she would have left that four-roomed cottage at once for
even humbler surroundings had she found that her