ed with consoling pride, "if they knew that
our Gilbert was playing 'cello in the orchestra and dining at this very
moment with Mr Millwain, some of them would be fine and surprised, that
they would!" No one would ever have suspected, from her calm, careless,
proud face, that such vain and two-penny thoughts were passing through
her head. But the thoughts that do pass through the heads of even the
most common-sensed philosophers, men and women, are truly astonishing.

In four minutes she was at Bursley Town Hall, where she changed into
another car--full of people equally indifferent to the Musical
Festival--for the suburb of Hillport, where Mrs Clayton Vernon lived.

"Put me out opposite Mrs Clayton Vernon's, will you?" she said to the
conductor, and added, "you know the house?"

He nodded as if to say disdainfully in response to such a needless
question: "Do I know the house? Do I know my pocket?"

As she left the car she did catch two men discussing the Festival, but
they appeared to have no intention of attending it. They were
earthenware manufacturers. One of them raised his hat to her. And she
said to herself: "He at any rate knows how important my Gilbert is in
the Festival!"

It was at the instant she pushed open Mrs Clayton Vernon's long and
heavy garden gate, and crunched in the frosty darkness up the short
winding drive, that the notion of the peculiarity of her errand first
presented itself to her. Mrs Clayton Vernon was a relatively great lady,
living in a relatively great house; one of the few exalted or peculiar
ones who did not dine in the middle of the day like other folk. Mrs
Clayton Vernon had the grand manner. Mrs Clayton Vernon instinctively
and successfully patronized everybody. Mrs Clayton Vernon was a
personage with whom people did not joke. And lo! Mrs Swann was about to
invade her courtly and luxurious house, uninvited, unauthorized, with a
couple of hot potatoes in her muff. What would Mrs Clayton Vernon think
of hot potatoes in a muff? Of course, the Swanns were "as good as
anybody." The Swanns knelt before nobody. The Swanns were of the cream
of the town, combining commerce with art, and why should not Mrs Swann
take practical measures to keep her son's hands warm in Mrs Clayton
Vernon's cold carriage? Still, there was only one Mrs Clayton Vernon in
Bursley, and it was impossible to deny that she inspired awe, even in
the independent soul of Mrs Swann.

Mrs Swann rang the bell, reassuri