"You mean I must talk about their things and not about mine?"
"More than that. Make the most of any common ground between yourself and them; make the least of any difference between yourself and them; and, above all, keep strenuously out of sight any real or fancied superiority you may possess over them. I always think that Saint Paul's saying, 'To the weak became I as weak,' was the perfection of good manners."
"I don't think I quite understand."
Miss Farringdon spoke in parables. "Then listen to this story. There was once a common soldier who raised himself from the ranks and earned a commission. He was naturally very nervous the first night he dined at the officers' mess, as he had never dined with gentlemen before, and he was afraid of making some mistake. It happened that the wine was served while the soup was yet on the table, and with the wine the ice. The poor man did not know what the ice was for, so took a lump and put it in his soup."
Elisabeth laughed.
"The younger officers began to giggle, as you are doing," Miss Farringdon continued; "but the colonel, to whom the ice was handed next, took a lump and put it in his soup also; and then the young officers did not want to laugh any more. The colonel was a perfect gentleman."
"It seems to me," said Elisabeth thoughtfully, "that you've got to be good before you can be polite."
"Politeness appears to be what goodness really is," replied Miss Farringdon, "and is an attitude rather than an action. Fine breeding is not the mere learning of any code of manners, any more than gracefulness is the mere learning of any kind of physical exercise. The gentleman apparently, as the Christian really, looks not on his own things, but on the things of others; and the selfish person is always both unchristian and ill-bred."
Elisabeth gazed wistfully up into Miss Farringdon's face. "I should like to be a real gentlewoman, Cousin Maria; do you think I ever shall be?"
"I think it quite possible, if you bear all these maxims in mind, and if you carry yourself properly and never stoop. I can not approve of the careless manners of the young people of to-day, who loll upon easy-chairs in the presence of their elders, and who slouch into a room with constrained familiarity and awkward ease," replied Miss Farringdon, who had never sat in an easy-chair in her life, and whose back was still as straight as an arrow.