Her demeanour, too, is very carefully observed.

If she is friendly and affable in manner, she is patronised; if she is distant and reserved, she is condemned as proud and pretentious.

In either case she is pretty sure to form a close intimacy with some one of the older female residents, and for a few weeks the two ladies are inseparable, till some incautious word or act disturbs the new-born friendship, and the devoted friends become bitter enemies.

Voluntarily or involuntarily the husbands get mixed up in the quarrel.

Highly undesirable qualities are discovered in the characters of all parties concerned, and are made the subject of unfriendly comment.