"If you had been, of course you would have honoured him the more for triumphing over difficulties," answered the elder Miss Brown, with smooth sarcasm.
"Yes, certainly that, of course; but I should have thought him very unsuitably placed as an instructor of youth and—"
The right adjustment of the cape seemed to interrupt the speech, but others mentally supplied the ending with reference to Miss Bennett.
"Miss Rexford, being one of Principal Trenholme's oldest friends, is not taken by surprise." Some one said this; Sophia hardly knew who it was. She knelt upright by the packing basket and threw back her head.
"I met him often at my own uncle's house. My uncle knew him thoroughly, and liked him well."
Most of the women there were sensibly commenting on the amount of work done, and allotting shares for the ensuing week. It would take a week at least to rouse them to the state of interest at which others had already arrived.
Her cape adjusted, Mrs. Bennett found something else to say. "Of course, personally, it makes no difference to me, for I have always felt there was something about Principal Trenholme—that is, that he was not—It is a little hard to express; one feels, rather than speaks, these things."
It was a lie, but what was remarkable about it was that its author did not know it for one. In the last half-hour she had convinced herself that she had always suffered in Trenholme's presence from his lack of refinement, and there was little hope that an imagination that could make such strides would not soon discover in him positive coarseness. As the party dispersed she was able to speak aside to Sophia.
"I see how you look upon it," she said. "There is no difference between one trade and another, or between a man who deals in cargoes of cattle and one who sells meat in a shop."—She was weakly excited; her voice trembled. "Looking down from a higher class, we must see that, although all trades are in a sense praiseworthy, one is as bad as another."
"They seem to me very much on a level," said Sophia. There was still a hard ring in her voice. She looked straight before her.