or, as you shall hear, it could be no more than that. So
nicely dressed, nothing vulgar or showy, a gown that Elise might have
made, and everything to correspond, in perfect taste. Fancy! and you may
imagine how I stared. I could not take my eyes off her. I was so
astonished that I rubbed up my old acquaintance with the old woman, and
asked her how her rheumatism was. I _hope_ it is rheumatism. At all
events I called it so, and then she told me as proud as a peacock that
it was her granddaughter; fancy, her granddaughter! did you ever hear of
such a thing? The other woman in the shop, the present Tozer, called out
to her by name. Phoebe they called her. Poor girl, I was so sorry for
her. A lady in appearance, and to have to submit to that!"

"Oughtn't ladies to be called Phoebe?" asked Janey. "Why not? It's rather
a pretty name."

"That is so like Janey," said Mrs. Hurst; "I know she is the clever one;
but she never can see what one means. It is not being called Phoebe, it
is because of her relations that I am sorry for her. Poor girl!
educating people out of their sphere does far more harm than good, I
always maintain. To see that nice-looking, well-dressed girl in Tozer's
shop, with all the butter boys calling her Phoebe--"

"The butter boys are as good as any one else," cried Janey, whose
tendencies were democratic. "I dare say she likes her relations as well
as we like ours, and better, though they do keep a shop."

"Oh, Janey!" cried Ursula, whose feelings were touched; then she
remembered that her sympathies ought not to flow in the same channel
with those of Mrs. Sam Hurst, and continued coldly, "If she had not
liked them she need not have come to see them."

"That is all you know, you girls. You don't know the plague of
relations, and how people have got to humble themselves to keep money in
the family, or keep up appearances, especially people that have risen in
the world. I declare I think they pay dear for rising in the world, or
their poor children pay dear--"

"You seem to take a great deal of interest in the Tozers," said Ursula,
glad to administer a little correction; "even if they came to St.
Roque's I could understand it--but Dissenters!" This arrow struck home.

"Well," said Mrs. Hurst, colouring, "of all people to take an interest
in Dissenters I am the last; but I was struck, I must admit, to see that
old Mrs. Tozer, looking like an old washerwoman, with a girl in a
twenty-guinea dress, you ma