es, and
by a magnanimous extension they confound helping each other with that.
In no country are there fewer forms and more reciprocities.

It was doubtless not singular that the ladies from Merrimac Avenue
should not feel that they were importunate: what was striking was that
Mrs. Nettlepoint did not appear to suspect it. However, she would in any
case have thought it inhuman to show that--though I could see that under
the surface she was amused at everything the lady from the South End
took for granted. I know not whether the attitude of the younger visitor
added or not to the merit of her good-nature. Mr. Porterfield's intended
took no part in her mother's appeal, scarcely spoke, sat looking at the
Back Bay and the lights on the long bridge. She declined the lemonade
and the other mixtures which, at Mrs. Nettlepoint's request, I offered
her, while her mother partook freely of everything and I reflected (for
I as freely consumed the reviving liquid) that Mr. Jasper had better
hurry back if he wished to profit by the refreshment prepared for him.

Was the effect of the young woman's reserve ungracious, or was it only
natural that in her particular situation she should not have a flow of
compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at her
often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss Mavis was
interesting. The candle-light enabled me to see that if she was not in
the very first flower of her youth she was still a handsome girl. Her
eyes and hair were dark, her face was pale and she held up her head as
if, with its thick braids, it were an appurtenance she was not ashamed
of. If her mother was excellent and common she was not common (not
flagrantly so) and perhaps not excellent. At all events she would not
be, in appearance at least, a dreary appendage, and (in the case of a
person 'hooking on') that was always something gained. Is it because
something of a romantic or pathetic interest usually attaches to a good
creature who has been the victim of a 'long engagement' that this young
lady made an impression on me from the first--favoured as I had been so
quickly with this glimpse of her history? Certainly she made no positive
appeal; she only held her tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected
whatever suggestion might have forced itself upon me that the spirit was
dead--the spirit of that promise of which she found herself doomed to
carry out the letter.

What corrected it less, I must