tch household goods, sometimes to see friends; any excuse
answered very well. The governess said, and really believed, that it was
better for Georgie to be away from the farm as much as possible, to see
town people (if only a country town), and to learn their ways.

The many cheap illustrated papers giving the last details of fashionable
costumes were, of course, brought home to be carefully read in the
evenings. These publications have a large circulation now in farmhouses.
Naturally Georgie soon began to talk about, and take an interest--as girls
will do--in the young gentlemen of the town, and who was and who was not
eligible. As for the loud-voiced young farmers, with their slouching walk,
their ill-fitting clothes, and stupid talk about cows and wheat, they were
intolerable. A banker's clerk at least--nothing could be thought of under
a clerk in the local banks; of course, his salary was not high, but then
his 'position.' The retail grocers and bakers and such people were quite
beneath one's notice--low, common persons. The 'professional tradesmen'
(whatever that may be) were decidedly better, and could be tolerated. The
solicitors, bank managers, one or two brewers (wholesale--nothing retail),
large corn factors or coal merchants, who kept a carriage of some
kind--these formed the select society next under, and, as it were,
surrounding the clergy and gentry. Georgie at twelve years old looked at
least as high as one of these; a farmhouse was to be avoided above all
things.

As she grew older her mind was full of the local assembly ball. The ball
had been held for forty years or more, and had all that time been in the
hands of the exclusive upper circles of the market town. They only asked
their own families, relations (not the poor ones), and visitors. When
Georgie was invited to this ball it was indeed a triumph. Her poor mother
cried with pleasure over her ball dress. Poor woman, she was a good, a too
good, mother, but she had never been to a ball. There were, of course,
parties, picnics, and so on, to which Georgie, having entered the charmed
circle, was now asked; and thus her mind from the beginning centred in the
town. The sheep-fold, the cattle-pen, the cheese-tub, these were thrust
aside. They did not interest her, she barely understood the meaning when
her father took the first prize at an important cattle show. What
So-and-so would wear at the flower show, where all the select would come,
much more nearl