“I don’t know what you mean by that.  ’Twas in my mind that I’d rather be on that committee than on any other.  She’s a proper lady, whatever you may say, Mary-Martha.  And the spoons were real silver—­ I took occasion to turn mine over, and there was the lion on the back of it, sure enough.”

“I saw you in the very act, and meant to tell you of it later; but other things drove it out of my head.  You should have more command over yourself, Charity Oliver.”

“But I can’t,” Miss Oliver protested.  “When I see pretty things like that, my fingers won’t stop twiddlin’ till I make sure.”

“By the same argiment I wonder you didn’t pocket the spoon.  Which was old Lord Some-thing-or-Other’s complaint; though I doubt you wouldn’t get off so light as he did.”

“There was the tea-pot, too. . . .  I couldn’t get nigh enough to see the mark on that, though I tried.  Next time, perhaps—­though I doubt she won’t have the silver out for ordinary workin’ parties—­”

“Tut—­the tea-pot was silver right enough.  I ought to know, havin’ one of my own and a heavier by ounces.  No, I don’t use it except on special occasions:  because you can’t make so good tea in silver as in china ware; and clome is better again.  But though you lock it away, a silver tea-pot is a thing to be conscious of.  I don’t hold,” Mrs Polsue fell back on her favourite formula, “with folks puttin’ all their best in the shop window.”

“Well, you must be strong-minded!  For my part,” Miss Oliver confessed, “little luxuries always get the better o’ me.  I declare that if a rich man was to come along an’ promise to load me with diamonds and silver tea-pots and little knick-knacks of that sort, I shouldn’ care who he was, nor how ugly, but I’d just shut my eyes and fling myself at his head.”

“You’d better advertise in the papers, then.  It’s time,” said Mrs Polsue sardonically.  She wheeled about.  “Charity Oliver, you needn’t use no more silly speech to prove what I could see with my own eyes, back yonder, even if I hadn’t known it already.  You’re a weak fool—­that’s what you are!  Those folks, with their pretty manners and their ‘how-dee-do’s,’ and ‘I hope I see you well’s,’ and their talk about all classes bein’ at one in those times of national trial and standin’ shoulder to shoulder till it makes a body sick—­do you reckon they mean a word of it?  Do you reckon that if ’twas Judgment Day itself, and you given to eatin’ peas with a knife, they’d really want you to luncheon?”

“But I don’t.”

“I’m puttin’ it for the sake of argument—­”

“Then I wish you wouldn’t,” Miss Oliver interrupted with some spirit.

“—­And old Hambly kow-towing like a Puss-in-Boots till I could have wrung his neck for him—­and you weakenin’ and playin’ gentility as you picked it up, like another cat after a mouse—­and myself the only one left to show ’em plain that we weren’t to be put upon—­yes, and after you’d hoped, up to the very door, that whatever happened, I’d take a proper stand!”