As she thought of the ferry it was all Mrs.Edes could do to keep her smooth brow from a frown.

Somehow the ferry always humiliated her; the necessity of going up or down that common, democratic gang plank, clinging to the tail of her fine gown, and seating herself in a row with people who glanced askance at her evening wrap and her general magnificence.
Poor Mrs.Edes was so small and slight that holding up magnificence and treading the deck with her high-heeled shoes was physically fatiguing.

Had she been of a large, powerful physique, had her body matched her mind, she might not have felt a sense of angry humiliation.

As it was, she realised that for her, _her_, to be obliged to cross the ferry was an insult at the hands of Providence.
But the tunnel was no better, perhaps worse,--that plunged into depths below the waters, like one in a public bath.

Anything so exquisite, so dainty, so subtly fine and powerful as herself, should not have been condemned to this.