She would have considered it much more according to the eternal fitness of things had her son Andrew been attending a queen whom he would have dropped at her palace on the way.

She writhed inwardly whenever little Ellen spoke of her aunt Eva, and would have forbidden her to do so had she dared.
"To think of that child associating with a shop-girl!" she said to Mrs.Pointdexter.

Mrs.Pointdexter was her particular friend, whom she regarded with loving tolerance of superiority, though she had been the daughter of a former clergyman of the town, and had wedded another, and might presumably have been accounted herself of a somewhat higher estate.

The gentle and dependent clergyman's widow, when she came back to her native city after the death of her husband, found herself all at once in a pleasant little valley of humiliation at the feet of her old friend, and was contented to abide there.

"Perhaps your son's sister-in-law will marry and go away," she said, consolingly, to Mrs.Zelotes, who indeed lived in that hope.