“Good enough!” exclaimed Mrs. Butler.  “She’s twice too good for any one of them.  Didn’t her dress fit neat, Maria?  Well, I hope she won’t get let in by their fine ways.  For my part, I’m not going to take any notice of the Bertrams.  The way they behaved was past enduring.  Not at homing when I called, and then leaving their cards on the day when I was at the bazaar.  Highty-tighty, says I, who’s Mrs. Bertram that she should look down on us in this fashion?  Isn’t the widow of a good honest butter merchant who paid his way, and left a comfortable fortune behind him, fit to associate with any lady of the land?  Mrs. Bertram, indeed!  A nice way she has treated us all.  It isn’t every newcomer we Northbury folks would take up.  We hold ourselves high, that we do.  Now, what’s the matter, Maria?”

“We didn’t hold ourselves high about Mrs. Bertram,” replied Miss Peters.  “It isn’t fair to say that we did.  We all rushed up to call before she had the carpets well down.  I did say, Martha, and you may remember too that I said it, for you were helping me to the tail of the salmon at the time, and I remarked that there was little or nothing to eat on it, you’ll remember that I said to you:  ’let them put their carpets straight at least.’  But you wouldn’t—­you were all agog to be off, when you saw that Mrs. Gorman Stanley had gone up there in her new bonnet, with the red and yellow poppies—­the bonnet you know that she said she got from London.”

“Which she didn’t,” snapped Mrs. Butler; “for I saw those identical poppies in Perry’s shop on the quay.  Well, well, Maria, I may have been a bit hasty in rushing after those who didn’t want me, but the result would have been all the same.  Maria, there’s only one solution of the way we have been treated by that proud, stuck-up, conceited body.  Maria, she doesn’t pay her way.”

Miss Peters rolled her eyes with a quick dart at her sister.

“They do say she’s very close in the kitchen,” she remarked; “and the butcher told Susan that they only go in for New Zealand.”

Mrs. Butler rose from her seat, to express more markedly her disgust for colonial viands.

“Ugh!” she said.  “Catch me putting a morsel of that poisonous stuff inside my mouth.  Well, well, you’ll see I’m right, Maria.  She don’t pay her way, so she’s ashamed, and well she may be, to look honest folk in the face.”

“Beatrice has got up to the other boat,” interrupted Miss Peters.  Give me the glass, quickly, Martha.  My word, the two boats are touching.  And—­would you believe it?—­one of the young ladies is getting into Bee’s boat, Martha.  She’s towing Driver’s boat after her own!  Well, well, that will be nuts to Mrs. Bertram.  I declare, Martha, I shouldn’t be one bit surprised if that young jackanapes of a brother fell in love with our Bee.”

“He won’t get her for his pains,” retorted Mrs. Butler.  “Those who don’t pay their way won’t touch Beatrice Meadowsweet’s fortune.  But, there, I’m sick of the subject.  Let’s talk of something else.  Isn’t that Mrs. Gorman Stanley coming down the street?  Open the window and call out to her, Maria.  Ask her if she wants me to send her round one pound of butter, or two from the farm?”