Mrs. Thompson. W. B. Maxwell

she goes."

      "Who?"

      "Mrs. Thompson."

      "Oh!"

      The genial May sunshine flashed gaily, lighting up the whole street, making both ladies blink their eyes as the carriage rolled away.

      "What a crowd there is outside Bence's," said Miss Enid. "How mean it is of him not to close!"

      The first shop they passed was Bence's drapery stores, and Mrs. Thompson glanced carelessly at the thronged pavement in front of these improperly open windows.

      "Mr. Bence's motto," said Mrs. Thompson, "is cheap and nasty," and she laughed with an amused scorn for so mean a trade rival. "His method of doing business is like the trumpery he offers to the public. I have a rather impudent letter from him in my pocket now, and I want—"

      But then Mrs. Thompson's strong eyebrows contracted, and she shrugged her shoulders and looked away from Bence's. She had just noticed two of her own shop-girls going into Bence's to buy his trumpery. Something distinctly irritating in the thought that these feather-headed girls regularly carried half their wages across the road to Bence's!

      Throughout the length of High Street there were too many of such signs of the vulgar times: the ever-changing trade, old shops giving place to new ones—an American boot-shop, a branch of the famous cash tobacconists, the nasty cheap restaurant opened by the great London caterers, Parisian jewellery absorbing one window of the historic clocksmiths,—everywhere indications of that love of tawdriness and glitter which slowly atrophies the sense of solid worth, of genuineness and durability.

      Yet everywhere, also, signs of the old life of the town still vigorous—aldermen and councillors taking the air; Mr. Wiseman, the wealthy corn-merchant; Mr. Dempsey, the auctioneer-mayor; Mr. Young, owner of a hundred horses besides this pair of gallant greys that were drawing Mrs. Thompson.

      Everyone of the solid old townsfolk knew her; all that was respectably permanent bowed and smiled at her. The drive was like a royal progress when they swept through the market square, past the ancient town hall now a museum, under the shadows thrown by the new municipal buildings, and the other and bigger church of Holy Trinity, out beneath the noble gatehouse, and up into the sunlit slope of Hill Street. Hats off on either side, broad masculine faces smiling in the sunlight. All the best of the town knew her and was proud of her.

      Her story was of the simplest, and all knew it. Mr. Thompson had been the last and most feeble representative of a powerful dynasty of shop-keepers; at his death it became at once apparent that the grand old shop was nothing but an effete, played out, and utterly exhausted possession; his widow was left practically penniless, with an insolvent business to wind up, and an orphaned little girl to support and rear. And young Mrs. Thompson was ignorant of all business matters, knew nothing more of shops than can be learned by any shop-customer. Nevertheless, with indomitable energy, she threw herself into business life. She did not shut up Thompson's; she kept it going. In two years it was again a paying concern; in a few more years it was a stronger and more flourishing enterprise than it had ever been since its establishment in 1813; now it was immensely prosperous and a credit to the town.

      They all knew how she had toiled until the success came, how generously she had used the money that her own force and courage earned—a large-minded, open-handed, self-reliant worker, combining a woman's endurance with a man's strength,—and only one weakness: the pampering devotion to her girl. She was making her daughter too much of a fine lady; she had extravagantly worshipped this idol; she had spoiled the long-nosed Enid. The town knew all about that.

      Bowing to right and to left, Mrs. Thompson drove up Hill Street, and then stopped the carriage outside the offices of Mr. Prentice, solicitor and commissioner of oaths.

      "Only two or three words with him, Enid. I promise not to be more than five minutes."

      Mr. Prentice came to the carriage door; and was asked to read the letter from Mr. Bence the fancy draper.

      "Don't you think it's rather impertinent?"

      "Of course I do," said Mr. Prentice. "I wouldn't answer it. Throw it into the waste-paper basket."

      "Oh, no, I shall answer it ... I can't allow Mr. Bence to suppose that I should ever be afraid of him."

      "Afraid of him!" And Mr. Prentice laughed contemptuously. "You afraid of such a little bounder.... Look here. Shall I go round and kick the brute?"

      Mrs. Thompson laughed, too. "No, no," she said, "that would scarcely be professional."

      "I'll do it after office hours—in my private capacity—and of course without entering it to your account."

      Mr. Prentice was a jolly red-faced man of fifty, with healthy clean-shaven cheeks, and small grey whiskers of a sporting cut. Altogether the most eminent solicitor in Mallingbridge, he had clients among all the country gentlefolk of the neighbourhood; he rode to hounds still, and kept his horses at Young's stables; he stood high in the Masonic craft and could sing an excellent comic song. He was at once Mrs. Thompson's trusted legal adviser, her staunch friend, and, as he himself declared, her admiring slave.

      "One more word," said Mrs. Thompson. "It is time that I gave another dinner at the Dolphin. There are two new men on the Council—and there will be more new men next November. I shall want your help to act as deputy host for me. Will you think it out—draw up a list of guests—and arrange everything?"

      "It is for you to command, and for me to obey," said genial Mr. Prentice. "But, upon my word, I don't know why you should go on feasting people in this way."

      "I like to stand well with the town."

      "And so you do. So you would, if you never gave them another glass of champagne.... I think your mamma is far too generous."

      But Miss Enid, who seemed unutterably bored, was staring out of the carriage in the other direction. She had not been listening to Mr. Prentice, and she did not hear him when he addressed her directly.

      "Then good-bye. Drive on, coachman.... There," and Mrs. Thompson turned gaily to her daughter. "That's more than enough business for Thursday afternoon, isn't it, Enid?"

      They drove along the London road, through the pretty village of Haggart's Cross, as far as the chalk cliffs beneath the broad downs; and then, descending again, through beech woods and fir plantations to the valley where the river Malling runs and twists beside the railway line all the way home to the town.

      The world was fresh and bright, with the May wind blowing softly and the May flowers budding sweetly. Cattle in the green fields, birds in the blue sky, pinafored children chanting a lesson behind the latticed panes of their schoolhouse, primroses peeping from grassy banks, and, far and near, the white hawthorn shedding its perfume, giving its fragrant message of spring, of hope, of life—plenty of things to look at with pleasure, plenty of things to talk about, though one might often have seen them before.

      But Enid was somehow languid, listless, even lumpish, and Mrs. Thompson did nearly all the looking and talking.

      "I always think that is such an imposing place. The entrance seems to warn one off—to tell one not to forget what a tremendous swell the owner is."

      They were passing the lodge-gates of a great nobleman's seat, and one had a rapid impression of much magnificence. Stone piers, sculptured urns, floreated iron, massive chains; and behind the forbidding barrier a vista of swept gravel and mown grass, with solemn conifers proudly ranked, and standard rhododendrons just beginning pompously to bloom—no glimpse of the mansion itself, but an intuitive perception of something vast, remote, unattainable.

      Enid looked through the bars at my lord's gravel drive attentively, almost wistfully, perhaps thinking of the few and august people to whom these splendours would be familiar—of the lucky people who are brought up in palaces instead of in shops.

      "It is a meet of hounds." Miss Enid broke a long silence to give her mother this information. "And when I was staying at Colonel Salter's, I met a man