ccount-books of a village shop, who is unpunctual, unreasoning, and in
every respect uneducated--a woman, in short, who has, one would think,
daily reason to be thankful that her necessities are supplied by other
people, she is pretty sure to be always regretting that she is not a
man.

Another, trick that some silly ladies have _riles_ me (as we say in
Yorkshire) far more than this odd ambition for responsibilities one is
quite incompetent to assume. Mrs. St. John had it, and as it was
generally displayed for the benefit of gentlemen, who seem as a rule to
be very susceptible to flattery, I suppose it is more a kind of
drawing-room "pretty talk" than the expression of deliberate opinions.
It consists of contrasting girls with boys and women with men, to the
disparagement of the former, especially in matters over which
circumstances and natural disposition are commonly supposed to give them
some advantage.

I remember hearing a fat, good-natured girl at one of Aunt Theresa's
garden-parties say, with all the impressiveness of full conviction,
"Girls are far more cruel than boys, really. You know, women are _much_
more cruel than men--oh, I'm _sure_ they are!" and the idea filled me
not less with amazement than with horror. This very young lady had been
most good-natured to us. She had the reputation of being an unselfish
and much-beloved elder sister. I do not think she would have hurt a fly.
Why she said this I cannot imagine, unless it was to please the young
gentleman she was talking to. I think he did look rather gratified. For
my own part, the idea worried my little head for a long time--children
give much more heed to general propositions of this kind than is
commonly supposed.]

There was one disadvantage in the very fulness of the sympathy the
ladies gave each other over their little affairs. The main point was apt
to be neglected for branches of the subject. If Mrs. Minchin consulted
Mrs. Buller about a cook, that particular cook might be discussed for
five minutes, but the rest of a two hours' visit would probably be
devoted to recollections of Aunt Theresa's cooks past and present, Mrs.
Minchin's "coloured cooks" in Jamaica, and the cooks engaged by the
mothers and grandmothers of both ladies.

Thus when Aunt Theresa took counsel with her friends about poor Matilda,
they hardly kept to Matilda's case long enough even to master the facts,
and on this particular occasion Mrs. St. John plunged at once into a