"I thought the Claytons were a very respectable family," remarked Mrs. Lemmington.
"Respectable! Everybody is getting respectable now-a-days. If they are respectable, it is very lately that they have become so. What is Mr. Clayton, I wonder, but a school-master! It's too bad that such people will come crowding themselves into genteel neighborhoods. The time was when to live in Sycamore Row was guarantee enough for any one—but, now, all kinds of people have come into it."
"I have never met Mrs. Clayton," remarked Mrs. Lemmington, "but I have been told that she is a most estimable woman, and that her daughters have been educated with great care. Indeed, they are represented as being highly accomplished girls."
"Well, I don't care what they are represented to be. I'm not going to keep company with a schoolmaster's wife and daughters, that's certain."
"Is there anything disgraceful in keeping a school?"
"No, nor in making shoes, either. But, then, that's no reason why I should keep company with my shoemaker's wife, is it? Let common people associate together—that's my doctrine."
"But what do you mean by common people, Mrs. Marygold?"
"Why, I mean common people. Poor people. People who have not come of a respectable family. That's what I mean."
"I am not sure that I comprehend your explanation much better than I do your classification. If you mean, as you say, poor people, your objection will not apply with full force to the Claytons, for they are now in tolerably easy circumstances. As to the family of Mr. Clayton, I believe his father was a man of integrity, though not rich. And Mrs. Clayton's family I know to be without reproach of any kind."
"And yet they are common people for all that," persevered Mrs. Marygold. "Wasn't old Clayton a mere petty dealer in small wares. And wasn't Mrs. Clayton's father a mechanic?"