Miss Bennett said she had never been "home," but she longed, above all things, to go.
She had, it seemed, been born in Canada, and her parents had no possessions in the mother-country, and yet she always called it "home." This was evidently a tradition.
Sophia, who had come from England a little tired of the conditions there, and eager for a change, felt the pathetic sameness of the discontent wrought by surfeit and by famine.
"Yet," said she, "it is a relief to the mind to feel that one lives in a country where no worthy person is starving, and where every one has a good chance in life if he will but avail himself of it. It seems to make me breathe more freely to know that in all this great country there is none of that necessary poverty that we have in big English towns."
Little answer was made to this, and Sophia went on to talk of what interested her in English politics; but found that of the politics, as well as of the social condition, of the country she adored, Miss Bennett was largely ignorant. Her interest in such matters appeared to sum itself up in a serene belief that Disraeli, then prominent, was the one prop of the English Constitution, and as adequate to his position as Atlas beneath the world. Now, Sophia cherished many a Radical opinion of her own, and she would have enjoyed discussion; but it would have been as difficult to aim a remark at the present front of her new acquaintance as it would be for a marksman to show his skill with a cloud of vapour as a target. Sophia tried Canadian politics, owning her ignorance and expressing her desire to understand what she had read in the newspapers since her arrival; but Miss Bennett was not sure that there was anything that "could exactly be called politics" in Canada, except that there was a Liberal party who "wanted to ruin the country by free trade."
Sophia ceased to take the initiative. She still endeavoured to respect the understanding of a girl of whom she had heard that when her father's fortunes were at a low ebb she had retrieved them by good management and personal industry—a girl, too, who through years of toil had preserved sprightliness and perfect gentility. What though this gentility was somewhat cramped by that undue importance given to trifles which is often the result of a remote life; it was still a very lovely thing, a jewel shining all the more purely for its iron setting of honest labour. Sophia fought with the scorn that was thrusting itself into her heart as she listened when Miss Bennett now talked in a charming way about the public characters and incidents which interested her.
"I wish for your sake, Miss Rexford," she said, "that some of the Royal family would come out again. The only time that there is any real advantage in being in a colony is when some of them come out; for here, you know, they take notice of every one."
"One would still be on the general level then," said Sophia, smiling.
"Well, I don't know. It makes one feel distinguished, you know, in spite of that. Now, when the Prince was out, he stopped here for a night, and we had a ball. It was simply delightful! He danced with us all—I mean with all who could claim to be ladies, and indeed with some who could not; but how could he discriminate? There was a man called Blake, who kept a butcher's shop here then—you may have noticed we haven't such a thing as a butcher's shop in the village now, Miss Rexford?"
"Indeed I have. It seems so odd."