. One can get on with them. It is very unpleasant to have to
say it; buying and selling now as we have it in Manchester does not
contract the mind. I suppose we all buy and sell more and less. How is
it? When it is tea and sugar--"

"Or butter and cheese," said Phoebe with a laugh, which she could not
quite keep from embarrassment. "I must be honest and tell you before you
go any further. You don't know that I belong to the Tozers, Mr.
Northcote, who are in that line of business. Don't look so dreadfully
distressed. Perhaps I shouldn't have told you, had you not been sure to
find out. Old Mr. Tozer is my grandfather, and I am staying there. It is
quite simple. Papa came to Carlingford when he was a young clergyman,
newly ordained. He was pastor at Salem Chapel, and married mamma, who
was the daughter of one of the chief members. I did not know myself when
I came to Carlingford that they actually kept a shop, and I did not like
it. Don't apologize, please. It is a very difficult question," said
Phoebe philosophically, partly to ease herself, partly to set him at his
ease, "what is best to do in such a case. To be educated in another
sphere and brought down to this, is hard. One cannot feel the same for
one's relations; and yet one's poor little bit of education, one's petty
manners, what are these to interfere with blood relationships? And to
keep everybody down to the condition they were born, why, that is the
old way--"

"Miss Beecham, I don't know what to say. I never meant--I could not
tell. There are excellent, most excellent people in all classes."

"Exactly so," said Phoebe, with a laugh. "We all know that; one man is as
good as another--if not better. A butterman is as good as a lord; but--"
she added, with a little elevation of her eyebrows and shrug of her
shoulders, "not so pleasant to be connected with. And you don't say
anything about my difficulty, Mr. Northcote. You don't realize it
perhaps, as I do. Which is best: for everybody to continue in the
position he was born in, or for an honest shopkeeper to educate his
children and push them up higher until they come to feel themselves
members of a different class, and to be ashamed of him? Either way, you
know, it is hard."

Northcote was at his wit's end. He had no fellow-feeling for this
difficulty. His friends were all much better off than he was as a poor
minister. They were Manchester people, with two or three generations of
wealth behind them, relati