If, of late, she had occasionally wept over any paragraph in her life’s story, those tears were never shed in public—of their bitterness she never complained to any created being.
Her happiness the world could not mar, her grief the world could not cure; and, perhaps for both these reasons, and also because she felt that society was by no means an inexpensive luxury, she did not respond to the advances now made with so much alacrity as the ladies of the three parishes thought she might have done under the circumstances.
“Under the circumstances” meant, that, although they—the ladies—had neglected Mrs. Dudley at first, still they had availed themselves of the earliest opportunity which offered of making amends to her for their former want of attention.
They were willing to forget all the years during which the Dudleys had voluntarily put themselves on one side, if the Dudleys would forget those years likewise; but Heather did not, as has been stated, appear unduly elated by the somewhat tardy honour which was now sought to be thrust upon her. It was not in her nature to be unthankful or ungracious; but her mind was troubled about her child, she said, and she trusted visitors would excuse her coming down to them.
Thus Bessie Ormson and Agnes Dudley were in the habit of repulsing great ladies day after day; but, somehow, the autocrats of their various ilks did not take these apologetic messages in bad part,—rather, on the contrary, they professed their anxiety that poor dear Mrs. Dudley should not leave her little girl, and appeared quite content to hear the story of the accident from the lips of other members of Squire Dudley’s family.
Hitherto, most decidedly, the younger Dudleys had been rather a trouble to the minds of those exalted persons who occasionally deigned to discuss Berrie Down Hollow and the persons who dwelt there.
They were regarded as a species of fungus which had been permitted to grow upon and disfigure a very old and a very good tree. Grandchildren were they of an alderman—a poor alderman, be it remembered, who had not even thought it worth his while to recognise the honour birth had conferred on him and his, by leaving a sufficient amount of money behind to patch up the broken fortunes of the Dudleys of Berrie Down.
If trade were to be tolerated at all, it could only be tolerated for the sake of the wealth it brought to aristocratic, but empty coffers.
In itself, like a servant, it was an evil; but like a servant also, if it did its work, its presence might be both tolerated and approved.
If it failed to perform its appointed task—if it grew poor and pretentious, like its betters, then the sooner it was stamped out the better.