hter, it was said that he had married "a good-looking girl"; also
that he had married "a very nice girl"; those were the expressions used.
She liked the company of men and she was much liked by men (the opinion
of the garrulous Hapgood may be recalled in this connection). She very
much liked the society of women of her own age or older than herself,
and she was very popular with such. She did not like girls, married or
unmarried.

II

Mabel belonged to that considerable class of persons who, in
conversation, begin half their sentences with "And just imagine--"; or
"And only fancy--"; or "And do you know--." These exclamations,
delivered with much excitement, are introductory to matters considered
extraordinary. Their users might therefore be imagined somewhat easily
astonished. But they have a compensatory steadiness of mind in regard to
much that mystifies other people. To Mabel there was nothing mysterious
in birth, or in living, or in death. She simply would not have
understood had she been told there was any mystery in these things. One
was born, one lived, one died. What was there odd about it? Nor did she
see anything mysterious in the intense preoccupation of an insect, or
the astounding placidity of a primrose growing at the foot of a tree. An
insect--you killed it. A flower--you plucked it. What's the mystery?

Her life was living among people of her own class. Her measure of a man
or of a woman was, Were they of her class? If they were, she gladly
accepted them and appeared to find considerable pleasure in their
society. Whether they had attractive qualities or unattractive qualities
or no qualities at all did not affect her. The only quality that
mattered was the quality of being well-bred. She called the classes
beneath her own standard of breeding "the lower classes", and so long as
they left her alone she was perfectly content to leave them alone. In
certain aspects the liked them. She liked "a civil tradesman" immensely;
she liked a civil charwoman immensely; and she liked a civil workman
immensely. It gave her as much pleasure, real pleasure that she felt in
all her emotions, to receive civility from the classes that ministered
to her class--servants, tradespeople, gardeners, carpenters, plumbers,
postmen, policemen--as to meet any one in her own class. It never
occurred to her to reckon up how enormously varied was the class whose
happy fortune it was to minister to her class and she would not have