as you call it—­(pardon me, Madam,” said she to her, smiling) “when she cannot raise her style above the word girl, coming off from a tour you have made so delightful to her.”—­“I protest to you, my Lady C.,” replied her ladyship, with great goodness, “that word, which once I used through pride, as you’ll call it, I now use for a very different reason.  I begin to doubt, whether to call her sister, is not more honour to myself than to her; and to this hour am not quite convinc’d.  When I am, I will call her so with pleasure.”  I was quite overcome with this fine compliment, but could not answer a word:  and the countess said, “I could have spared you longer, had not the time of day compelled your return; for I have been very agreeably entertained, as well as you, although but with the talk of your woman and mine.  For here they have been giving me such an account of Mrs. B.’s economy, and family management, as has highly delighted me.  I never knew the like; and in so young a lady too.—­We shall have strange reformations to make in our families, Lady Davers, when we go home, were we to follow so good an example.—­Why, my dear Mrs. B.,” continued her ladyship, “you out-do all your neighbours.  And indeed I am glad I live so far from you:—­for were I to try to imitate you, it would still be but imitation, and you’d have the honour of it.”—­“Yet you hear, and you see by yesterday’s conversation,” said Lady Davers, “how much her best neighbours, of both sexes, admire her:  they all yield to her the palm, unenvying.”—­“Then, my good ladies,” said I, “it is a sign I have most excellent neighbours, full of generosity, and willing to encourage a young person in doing right things:  so it makes, considering what I was, more for their honour than my own.  For what censures should not such a one as I deserve, who have not been educated to fill up my time like ladies of condition, were I not to employ myself as I do?  I, who have so little other merit, and who brought no fortune at all.”—­“Come, come, Pamela, none of your self-denying ordinances,” that was Lady Davers’s word; “you must know something of your own excellence:  if you do not, I’ll tell it you, because there is no fear you will be proud or vain upon it.  I don’t see, then, that there is the lady in yours, or any neighbourhood, that behaves with more decorum, or better keeps up the part of a lady, than you do.  How you manage it, I can’t tell; but you do as much by a look, and a pleasant one too, that’s the rarity! as I do by high words, and passionate exclamations:  I have often nothing but blunder upon blunder, as if the wretches were in a confederacy to try my patience.”—­“Perhaps,” said I, “the awe they have of your ladyship, because of your high qualities, makes them commit blunders; for I myself was always more afraid of appearing before your ladyship, when you have visited your honoured mother, than of any body else, and have been the more sensibly awkward through that very awful respect.”—­“Psha,