Mrs Bray posed as a champion of her sex, but could not open her mouth without belittling them. However, I was too well seasoned in human nature to be disconcerted, and walked by her side enjoying her immensely, she was so delightfully, transparently patronising. There are many grades of patronage: that from people who ought to know better, and which is always bitterly resented by any one of spirit; while that of the big splodging ignoramus who doesn't know any better, to any one possessed of a sense of humour, is indescribably amusing. Mrs Bray's was of this order, and would have been galling only to the snob whose chief characteristic is a lack of common-sense—lack of common-sense being synonymous with snobbery.
"You'll get on very well with old grandma," she remarked, "she ain't such a bad old sort when you know her; she must have a bit of property too. Of course, I find her a bit narrer-minded, but that's to be expected, seeing I've lived a lot in the city before I come here, and she's only been up the country; but that Carry's the caution. The hussy! I only asked her over out of kindness, being a woman with a good home as I have, and did you hear her? Them hussies without homes ain't got no call to give themselves airs,—bits of things workin' for their livin'."
"I'm afraid I'm in the same category, as I have no home," I said by way of turning her wrath.
"Oh, well, yes, but you're different; you don't have to work for your livin'."
"Have you any daughters?" I asked.
"I had one, but she soon married. Like me, she was snapped up soon as she was old enough." Mrs Bray laughed delightedly.
Here was a broad-minded democrat who considered a woman lowered in becoming a useful working member of society, instead of remaining a toy or luxury kept by her father or some other man, and who, while loudly bawling for the emancipation of women from the yoke of men, nevertheless considered the only distinction a woman could achieve was through their favourable notice—an attitude of mind produced by moral and social codes so effectively calculated to foster immoral and untenable inconsistency!