ot by any means an insensitive woman--shook
her almost to the point of feeling that there was something in the
remonstrance of those dreadful young people. Yet, how could there be,
when no one knew better than she that the laborers on the Malloring
estate were better off than those on nine out of ten estates; better
paid and better housed, and--better looked after in their morals. Was
she to give up that?--when she knew that she WAS better able to tell
what was good for them than they were themselves. After all, without
stripping herself naked of every thought, experience, and action since
her birth, how could she admit that she was not better able? And slowly,
in the white room with the moss-green carpet, she recovered, till there
was only just a touch of soreness left, at the injustice implicit in
their words. Those two had been 'miserably brought up,' had never had
a chance of finding their proper place, of understanding that they were
just two callow young things, for whom Life had some fearful knocks in
store. She could even feel now that she had meant that saying: 'I am
sorry for you two!' She WAS sorry for them, sorry for their want of
manners and their point of view, neither of which they could help, of
course, with a mother like that. For all her gentleness and sensibility,
there was much practical directness about Mildred Malloring; for her, a
page turned was a page turned, an idea absorbed was never disgorged; she
was of religious temperament, ever trimming her course down the exact
channel marked out with buoys by the Port Authorities, and really
incapable of imagining spiritual wants in others that could not be
satisfied by what satisfied herself. And this pathetic strength she had
in common with many of her fellow creatures in every class. Sitting down
at the writing-table from which she had been disturbed, she leaned her
thin, rather long, gentle, but stubborn face on her hand, thinking.
These Gaunts were a source of irritation in the parish, a kind of open
sore. It would be better if they could be got rid of before quarter day,
up to which she had weakly said they might remain. Far better for them
to go at once, if it could be arranged. As for the poor fellow Tryst,
thinking that by plunging into sin he could improve his lot and his poor
children's, it was really criminal of those Freelands to encourage him.
She had refrained hitherto from seriously worrying Gerald on such points
of village policy--his han