where old Mrs. Murry was sitting "like a duchess," by a fireplace full
of coloured paper, and the room as cold as ice. And she was so grand
that she would hardly speak to Alice.'

'That must have been very unpleasant.'

'Oh, the poor girl had a dreadful time. She began with: "Very pleased to
make your acquaintance, Miss Dill. I know so very few persons in
service." Alice imitates her mincing way of talking, but I can't do it.
And then she went on to talk about her family, how they had farmed their
own land for five hundred years--such stuff! George had told Alice all
about it: they had had an old cottage with a good strip of garden and
two fields somewhere in Essex, and that old woman talked almost as if
they had been country gentry, and boasted about the Rector, Dr.
Somebody, coming to see them so often, and of Squire Somebody Else
always looking them up, as if they didn't visit them out of kindness.
Alice told me it was as much as she could do to keep from laughing in
Mrs. Murry's face, her young man having told her all about the place,
and how small it was, and how the Squire had been so kind about buying
it when old Murry died and George was a little boy, and his mother not
able to keep things going. However, that silly old woman "laid it on
thick," as you say, and the young man got more and more uncomfortable,
especially when she went on to speak about marrying in one's own class,
and how unhappy she had known young men to be who had married beneath
them, giving some very pointed looks at Alice as she talked. And then
such an amusing thing happened: Alice had noticed George looking about
him in a puzzled sort of way, as if he couldn't make out something or
other, and at last he burst out and asked his mother if she had been
buying up the neighbours' ornaments, as he remembered the two green
cut-glass vases on the mantelpiece at Mrs. Ellis's, and the wax flowers
at Miss Turvey's. He was going on, but his mother scowled at him, and
upset some books, which he had to pick up; but Alice quite understood
she had been borrowing things from her neighbours, just as she had
borrowed the little girl, so as to look grander. And then they had
tea--water bewitched, Alice calls it--and very thin bread and butter,
and rubbishy foreign pastry from the Swiss shop in the High Street--all
sour froth and rancid fat, Alice declares. And then Mrs. Murry began
boasting again about her family, and snubbing Alice and talking at her,
till