"With pride!" echoed the other. "I do not understand you. If you mean Mrs. Carpenter, I certainly like to think of her; but her qualities were entirely personal. I have nothing to be ashamed of in my family, and I am thankful for that; but, also, I am not aware that there is anything to be proud of. It is a merely negative feeling."
"But," Annette said, "your people have always been well off, and some were very rich, and they were educated."
"And you think me capable of pluming myself on that—of being proud of an ancestry of prosperous traders and merchants who were passably educated!"
Honora flushed, and drew herself up involuntarily, with an awakening of that invincible personal haughtiness which is more soaring than any mere royalty of blood.
"I never give it a thought, except in a negative way. They merely did what decent people with ordinary sense and capacity are obliged to do. No, Annette, don't fancy that I can walk on such small stilts. If it were an old historical name, now, one that painters had illustrated and poets sung, that would be fine. If there had been great warriors and mighty rulers, there would be a chance for pride to come in. Or, better, if it were some hero or benefactor to the race, whom I could look back to; or if it were a poet. I always fancy some grace surrounds the children of a poet. They may not sing, they may be personally commonplace; but, like the broken vase,
"'The scent of the roses will hang round them still.'"
"I think you must be descended from a poet," Annette said, smiling.
"And so, child," concluded Honora, laying her hand on her companion's arm, "don't condescend to go into the past for some reason why you should be respected; find it in yourself. I think it right to tell you now what might otherwise sound like flattery. I, and many better judges than I, think you uncommon and admirable. You have made little mistakes—as who has not?—but they were never mean ones. Don't be led into pettiness now."
Annette blushed.
"What set me talking of ancestry?" she exclaimed. "It's a dusty subject, not fit for this fresh, clear place. It belongs to the town. How quiet and lovely it is here! I would like to come often. In the city, I can't hear myself think."