“Why, the improvement which took place in the education of women. While women were degraded as they were in your time”——
“In my time, my dear Edgar,” said Hastings, quickly—“in my time! I can tell you that women were not in a degraded state then. Go back to the days of Elizabeth, if you please; but I assure you that in 1835 women enjoyed perfect equality of rights.”
“Did they! then our old friend, the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, has been imposing on us—but we will discuss this theme more at our leisure. Let us ask that neat pretty young woman for some strawberries and cream.”
They were ripe and delicious, and Hastings found, that however much all other things had changed, the fine perfume, the grateful flavour, the rich consistency of the fruit and cream were the same—nature never changes.
There were no unpleasant sights—no rotten vegetables or leaves, no mud, no spitting, no——in short, the whole looked like a painting, and the women all seemed as if they were dressed for the purpose of sitting for their portraits, to let other times have a peep at what was going on in a former world.
“If I am in my senses,” said Hastings, “which I very much doubt, this is the most pleasing change which time has wrought; I cannot but believe that I shall wake up in the morning and find this all a dream. This is no market—it is a picture.”
“We shall see,” said Edgar. “Come, let us proceed to the butchers’ market.”
So they walked on, and still the rippling stream followed them; and here no sights of blood, or stained hands, or greasy knives, or slaughter-house smells, were present. The meats were not hung up to view in the open air, as in times of old; but you had only to ask for a particular joint, and lo! a small door, two feet square, opened in the wall, and there hung the identical part.
“This gentleman is a stranger,” said Edgar, to a neatly dressed man, having on a snow white apron; “show him a hind quarter of veal; we do not want to buy any, but merely to look at what you have to sell.”
The little door opened, and there hung one of the fattest and finest quarters Hastings had ever seen.