soon lapsed into silence. Presently I heard Mrs. Gurrage
say--she also had been busy examining the room:

"Well, you have been good tenants, coverin' up the suite, but you've
no call to do it. You wouldn't be likely to soil it much, and I always
say when you let a house furnished, you can't expect it to continue
without wear and tear; so don't, please, bother to cover it with those
old things. Lor' bless me, it takes me back to see it! It was my first
suite after I married Mr. Gurrage, and we had a pretty place on Balham
Hill. We put it here because Augustus did not want anything the least
shabby up at The Hall, and I take it kind of you to have cared for it
so."

Grandmamma's face never changed; not the least twinkle came into her
eye--she is wonderful. I could hardly keep from gurgling with laughter
and was obliged to make quite an irritating rattle with the teaspoons.
Grandmamma frowned at that.

By the end of the visit we had been invited to view all the glories of
The Hall. (The place is called Ledstone Park; The Hall, apparently,
is Mrs. Gurrage's pet name for the house itself.) We would not find
anything old or shabby there, she assured us.

When they had gone grandmamma said to me, in a voice that always
causes my knees to shake, "Why did you not make a _reverence_ to Mrs.
Gurrage, may I ask?"

"Oh, grandmamma," I said, "courtesy to that person! She would not
have understood in the least, and would only have thought it was the
village 'bob' to a superior."

"My child,"--grandmamma's voice can be terrible in its fine
distinctness--"my teaching has been of little avail if you have not
understood the point, that one has _not_ good manners for the effect
they produce--but for what is due to one's self. This person--who, I
admit, should have entered by the back door and stayed in the kitchen
with Hephzibah--happened to be our guest and is a woman of years--and
yet, because she displeased your senses you failed to remember that
you yourself are a gentlewoman. What she thought or thinks is of not
the smallest importance in the world, but let me ask you in future to
remember, at least, that you are my granddaughter."

A big lump came in my throat.

_I hate the Gurrages!_

The next day one of the old maids--a Miss Burton--arrived just as
we were having tea. She was full of excitement at the return of the
owners of Ledstone, and gave us a quantity of information about them
in spite of grandmamma's aloofness fr