onsideration must dispose of small anomalies, such as the
acceptance, without cant, of certain forms of the shop, euphemized as
the store, but containing the same old vertebral counter. Not all forms.
Dry-goods were held in respect and chemists in comparative esteem; house
furnishings and hardware made an appreciable claim, and quite a leading
family was occupied with seed grains. Groceries, on the other hand, were
harder to swallow, possibly on account of the apron, though the grocer's
apron, being of linen, had several degrees more consideration than
the shoemaker's, which was of leather; smaller trades made smaller
pretensions; Mrs Milburn could tell you where to draw the line.
They were all hard-working folk together, but they had their little
prejudices: the dentist was known as "Doc," but he was not considered
quite on a medical level; it was doubtful whether you bowed to the
piano-tuner, and quite a curious and unreasonable contempt was bound up
in the word "veterinary." Anything "wholesale" or manufacturing stood,
of course, on its own feet; there was nothing ridiculous in molasses,
nothing objectionable in a tannery, nothing amusing in soap. Such airs
and graces were far from Elgin, too fundamentally occupied with the
amount of capital invested, and too profoundly aware how hard it was to
come by. The valuable part of it all was a certain bright freedom, and
this was of the essence. Trade was a decent communal way of making a
living, rooted in independence and the general need; it had none of
the meaner aspects. Your bow was negligible to the piano-tuner, and
everything veterinary held up its head. And all this again qualified,
as everywhere, by the presence or absence of the social faculty, that
magnetic capacity for coming, as Mrs Murchison would say, "to the fore,"
which makes little of disadvantages that might seem insuperable and, in
default, renders null and void the most unquestionable claims. Anyone
would think of the Delarues. Mr Delarue had in the dim past married his
milliner, yet the Delarues were now very much indeed to the fore. And,
on the other hand, the Leverets of the saw mills, rich and benevolent;
the Leverets were not in society simply, if you analysed it, because
they did not appear to expect to be in it. Certainly it was well not to
be too modest; assuredly, as Mrs Murchison said, you put your own ticket
on, though that dear soul never marked herself in very plain figures,
not knowing, perh