She called on the curate: and many and many a time, for years after, pointed out to her friends, and sometimes to her lodgers, the spot on the carpet where the poor benighted creature had knelt down.
So she went on, respected by all her friends, by all her tradesmen, by herself not a little, talking of her previous "misfortunes" with amusing equanimity; as if her father's parsonage-house had been a palace of splendour, and the one-horse chaise (with the lamps for evenings) from which she had descended, a noble equipage.

"But I know it is for the best, Clive," she would say to her nephew in describing those grandeurs, "and, thank heaven, can be resigned in that station in life to which it has pleased God to call me." The good lady was called the Duchess by her fellow-tradesfolk in the square in which she lived.

(I don't know what would have come to her had she been told she was a tradeswoman!) Her butchers, bakers, and market-people paid her as much respect as though she had been a grandee's housekeeper out of Kemp Town.

Knowing her station, she yet was kind to those inferior beings.

She held affable conversations with them, she patronised Mr.Rogers, who was said to be worth a hundred thousand--two-hundred-thousand pounds (or lbs.