surgeon, a cousin of Mrs. Wardour, for whom she had had a great
liking while yet they were boy and girl together. At the same time,
however much she would have her consider herself the superior of Mary
Marston, she by no means treated her as her own equal, and Letty could
not help being afraid of her aunt, as she called her.

The well-meaning woman was in fact possessed by two devils--the one the
stiff-necked devil of pride, the other the condescending devil of
benevolence. She was kind, but she must have credit for it; and Letty,
although the child of a loved cousin, must not presume upon that, or
forget that the wife and mother of long-descended proprietors of
certain acres of land was greatly the superior of any man who lived by
the exercise of the best-educated and most helpful profession. She
counted herself a devout Christian, but her ideas of rank, at
least--therefore certainly not a few others--were absolutely opposed to
the Master's teaching: they who did least for others were her
aristocracy.

Now, Letty was a simple, true-hearted girl, rather slow, who honestly
tried to understand her aunt's position with regard to her friend.
"Shop-girls," her aunt had said, "are not fitting company for you,
Letty."

"I do not know any other shop-girls, aunt," Letty replied, with hidden
trembling; "but, if they are not nice, then they are not like Mary.
She's downright good; indeed she is, aunt!--a great deal, ever so much,
better than I am."

"That may well be," answered Mrs. Wardour, "but it does not make a lady
of her."

"I am sure," returned Letty, bewildered, "on Sundays you could not tell
the difference between her and any other young lady."

"Any other well-dressed young woman, my dear, you should say. I believe
shop-girls do call their companions young ladies, but that can not
justify the application of the word. I am scarcely bound to speak of my
cook as a lady because letters come addressed to her as Miss Tozer. If
the word 'lady' should sink at last to common use, as in Italy every
woman is Donna, we must find some other word to ex-press what _used_ to
be meant by it."

"Is Mrs. Cropper a lady, aunt?" asked Letty, after a pause, in which
her brains, which were not half so muddled as she thought them, had
been busy feeling after firm ground in the morass of social distinction
thus opened under her.

"She is received as such," replied Mrs. Wardour, but with doubled
stiffness, through which ran a tone of i