dy whose occupation prescribed a
clean face could be expected to travel cheek by jowl, as a privilege,
with persons who were habitually seen with smutty ones, barefaced smut,
streaming out at the polite afternoon hour of six, jangling an empty
dinner pail. So much we may decide, and leave it, reflecting as we go
how simple and satisfactory, after all, are the prejudices which can
hold up such obvious justification. There was recently to be pointed
out in England the heir to a dukedom who loved stoking, and got his
face smutty by preference. He would have been deplorably subversive of
accepted conventions in Elgin; but, happily or otherwise, such persons
and such places have at present little more than an imaginative
acquaintance, vaguely cordial on the one side, vaguely critical on the
other, and of no importance in the sum.

Polite society, to return to it, preferred the alternative of staying
at home and mowing the lawn or drinking raspberry vinegar on its own
beflagged verandah; looking forward in the afternoon to the lacrosse
match. There was nearly always a lacrosse match on the Queen's Birthday,
and it was the part of elegance to attend and encourage the home team,
as well as that of small boys, with broken straw hats, who sneaked an
entrance, and were more enthusiastic than anyone. It was "a quarter" to
get in, so the spectators were naturally composed of persons who could
afford the quarter, and persons like the young Flannigans and Finnigans,
who absolutely couldn't, but who had to be there all the same. Lorne and
Advena Murchison never had the quarter, so they witnessed few lacrosse
matches, though they seldom failed to refresh themselves by a sight
of the players after the game when, crimson and perspiring, but still
glorious in striped jerseys, their lacrosses and running shoes slung
over one shoulder, these heroes left the field.

The Birthday I am thinking of, with Mrs Murchison as a central figure in
the kitchen, peeling potatoes for dinner, there was a lacrosse match of
some importance for the Fox County Championship and the Fox County Cup
as presented by the Member for the South Riding. Mrs Murchison remains
the central figure, nevertheless, with her family radiating from her,
gathered to help or to hinder in one of those domestic crises which
arose when the Murchisons were temporarily deprived of a "girl."
Everybody was subject to them in Elgin, everybody had to acknowledge and
face them. Let a new mi