Anna laughed, and said, "I hope I shall never be introduced to the world, for I should make a terrible figure in it; I have never been to boarding-school, you know, Mamma."
"True, my dear," returned Mrs. Meridith, "but the lessons you allude to are easily learnt without going there. I found them daily practised in the society I was in, and yet Mrs. Meridith was what was called an amiable woman, and, for so young a widow, remarkably strict in her conduct. She had one son, whom I had not yet seen, as he was then at college; but after I was so much at his mother's (for the evening parties to which I constantly accompanied her were so much later than my aunt's, that she allowed me to take up my residence there when we were in town,) he came home at the vacations, and I was introduced to him; and this Mr. Meridith, you will readily suppose, was afterwards my husband. But as my marriage will lead me into far different scenes, I shall, if you please, defer them till some other evening. You must be as tired of hearing as I am of relating those circumstances which,—however new they may be to you, are old and stale to me; and I am sick of what is called a knowledge of the world."
"And so, dear Madam, should I," replied Mr. Campbell; "but I cannot help acknowledging that we have too much of it in our little village, though in a humbler way. Human nature is the same every where, and a deceitful heart the characteristic which the word of God has given to man; we need not, therefore, go to London, or the great world, to find it out, unless our eyes are shut to what is going on within ourselves."
Supper was then ordered, and Mr. Campbell with great pleasure told Mrs. Meridith the alteration her last conversation with farmer Ward had made in his conduct towards himself.
"He has told me all," said he, "and with that ingenuousness, which I fear is not to be met with in the circles you have described to us, acknowledged himself wrong."
"In that respect," said Mrs. Meridith, "people belonging to less polished society have the advantage, for they are not ashamed to own themselves mistaken when they really feel they are so; while more polite ones never will."