thing to be a shopkeeper's daughter, and here am
I all the time, feeling quite comfortable, and proud of the shopkeeper
whose daughter I am."

"Oh! I beg your pardon," exclaimed Hesper, growing hot for, I almost
believe, the first time in her life, and therein, I fear, showing a
drop of bad blood from somewhere, probably her father's side of the
creation; for not even the sense of having hurt the feelings of an
inferior can make the thoroughbred woman of the world aware of the
least discomfort; and here was Hesper, not only feeling like a woman of
God's making, but actually showing it!--"How cruel of me!" she went on.
"But, you see, I never think of you--when I am talking to you--as--as
one of that class!"

Mary laughed outright this time: she was amused, and thought it better
to show it, for that would show also she was not hurt. Hesper, however,
put it down to insensibility.

"Surely, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, "you can not think the class to
which I belong in itself so objectionable that it is rude to refer to
it in my hearing!"

"I am very sorry," repeated Hesper, but in a tone of some offense: it
was one thing to confess a fault; another to be regarded as actually
guilty of the fault. "Nothing was further from my intention than to
offend you. I have not a doubt that shopkeepers are a most respectable
class in their way--"

"Excuse me, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary again, "but you quite mistake
me. I am not in the least offended. I don't care what you think of the
class. There are a great many shopkeepers who are anything but
respectable--as bad, indeed, as any of the nobility."

"I was not thinking of morals," answered Hesper. "In that, I dare say,
all classes are pretty much alike. But, of course, there are
differences."

"Perhaps one of them is, that, in our class, we make respectability
more a question of the individual than you do in yours."

"That may be very true," returned Hesper. "So long as a man behaves
himself, we ask no questions."

"Will you let me tell you how the thing looks to me?" said Mary.

"Certainly. You do not suppose I care for the opinions of the people
about me! I, too, have my way of looking at things."

So said Hesper; yet it was just the opinions of the people about her
that ruled all those of her actions that could be said to be ruled at
all. No one boasts of freedom except the willing slave--the man so
utterly a slave that he feels nothing irksome in his fetters. Yet,