to accept favours from strangers; and really, Vava, I don't
know what you mean by knowing my affairs before I know them myself. I
don't know when we are going to London yet. Perhaps not for a week or
two, and at any rate not with those people, who may be very kind, but
are not educated; he can't even speak the King's English. No, if we
can't make friends in our own class we will go without.'

Vava looked down at her sister, who stood with one hand on the gate,
looking so stiff and proud that her face, which was really a sweet one,
was almost forbidding. 'All right,' she said, swinging her feet to and
fro in a way that made Stella quite nervous--'all right, then; we'll go
in a stuffy railway-carriage, and have to sit up all night, and I shall
be sick, as I was when we went to Edinburgh; but you won't care as long
as you can stick your head up and look down on people who try to be
friendly and nice to you, just because he says "dy" instead of "day;"
and what does it matter? We pronounce some words quite wrong, according
to the English, and I dare say they'll laugh at us when we go south.
Mrs. M'Ewan said the waiter at the hotel couldn't understand her when
she asked for water.'

Mrs. M'Ewan was a neighbouring laird's wife, and spoke very broad
Scotch.

Stella made no answer to this tirade of her younger sister's, who swung
herself off the gate and walked back to the house with Stella in no
good-humour.

There they found a note from Mrs. Jones, which, to Stella's surprise,
was quite grammatically written, asking whether they would honour them
by occupying two seats in their car when they went back to town. 'My
husband is so taken by your sister, and hearing that the train made her
sick, he ventured to suggest your coming with us. He begs me to say that
he feels under such obligations to you for lending us your beautiful old
furniture and plate--which no money could repay or replace--that he
would be glad if you would accept this attention as a mark of our
gratitude.'

'That will fetch the proud hussy, if anything will. Poor girls, I am
very sorry for them, especially the elder, for she'll have a lot of
humble pie to eat before she's done,' Mr. Montague Jones had said to his
wife; but this remark, needless to say, she did not mention in the
letter. She only added that they were not particular which day they
returned to town, but would go any day that suited Miss Wharton.

Mr. Jones may not have been an educated man--