She counted herself a devout Christian, but her ideas of rank, at least--therefore certainly not a few others--were absolutely opposed to the Master's teaching: they who did least for others were her aristocracy.
Now, Letty was a simple, true-hearted girl, rather slow, who honestly tried to understand her aunt's position with regard to her friend.
"Shop-girls," her aunt had said, "are not fitting company for you, Letty." "I do not know any other shop-girls, aunt," Letty replied, with hidden trembling; "but, if they are not nice, then they are not like Mary.
She's downright good; indeed she is, aunt!--a great deal, ever so much, better than I am." "That may well be," answered Mrs.Wardour, "but it does not make a lady of her." "I am sure," returned Letty, bewildered, "on Sundays you could not tell the difference between her and any other young lady." "Any other well-dressed young woman, my dear, you should say.

I believe shop-girls do call their companions young ladies, but that can not justify the application of the word.

I am scarcely bound to speak of my cook as a lady because letters come addressed to her as Miss Tozer.

If the word 'lady' should sink at last to common use, as in Italy every woman is Donna, we must find some other word to ex-press what _used_ to be meant by it." "Is Mrs.Cropper a lady, aunt ?" asked Letty, after a pause, in which her brains, which were not half so muddled as she thought them, had been busy feeling after firm ground in the morass of social distinction thus opened under her.
"She is received as such," replied Mrs.Wardour, but with doubled stiffness, through which ran a tone of injury.
"Would you receive her, aunt, if she called upon you ?" "She has horses and servants, and everything a woman of the world can desire; but I should feel I was bowing the knee to Mammon were I to ask her to my house.

Yet such is the respect paid to money in these degenerate days that many a one will court the society of a person like that, who would think me or your cousin Godfrey unworthy of notice, because we have no longer a tithe of the property the family once possessed." The lady forgot there is a Rimmon as well as a Mammon.
"God knows," she went on, "how that woman's husband made his money! But that is a small matter nowadays, except to old-fashioned people like myself.