“One moment, Bee, I am really pleased that your fine friend’s mother has chosen to call at last.”

Beatrice frowned.

“Catherine is not my fine friend,” she said.

“Well, your friend, then, dearie.  I am glad your friend’s mother has called.”

“I am not—­that is, I am absolutely indifferent.  Now, I really must run away.  Good-bye until you see me again.”

She tripped out of the room as lightly and carelessly as she had entered it, and Mrs. Meadowsweet sat on by the window which looked into the garden.

Mrs. Meadowsweet had the smoothest and most tranquil of faces.  She had taken as her favorite motto in life, that somehow, if you only allowed them, things did fit all round.  Each event in her own career, to use her special phraseology “fitted.”  As her husband had to die, he passed away from this life at the most fitting moment.  As Providence had blessed her with only one child, a daughter was surely the most fitting companion for a widowed mother.  The house Mrs. Meadowsweet lived in fitted her requirements to perfection.  In short, she was fat and comfortable, both in mind and body; she never fretted, she never worried; she was not rasping and disagreeable; she was not fault-finding.  If her nature lacked depth, it certainly did not lack affection, generosity, and a true spirit of kindliness.  If she were a little too well pleased with herself, she was also well pleased with her neighbors.  She was not especially appreciated, for she was considered prosy and commonplace.  Prosy she undoubtedly was, but not commonplace, for invariable contentment and unbounded good-nature are more and more difficult to find in this censorious world.

Mrs. Meadowsweet now smiled gently to herself.

“However Beatrice may take it, I am glad Mrs. Bertram called,” she murmured. “He’d have liked it, poor man! he never put himself out, and he never interfered with me, no, never, poor dear.  But he liked people to show due respect—­it’s a respect to Beatrice for Mrs. Bertram to call.  It shows that she appreciates Beatrice as her daughter’s friend.  Mrs. Bertram, notwithstanding her pride, is likely to be very much respected in Northbury, and no wonder.  She’s a little above most of us, but we like her all the better for that.  We are going to be proud of her.  It’s nice to have some one to be proud of.  And she has no airs when you come to know her, no, she hasn’t airs; she’s as pleasant as possible, and seems interested too, that is, as interested as people like us can expect from people like her.  She didn’t even condescend to Beatrice.  I wonder how my little girl would have taken it, if she had condescended to her.  Yes, Jane, do you want me?”

An elderly servant opened the drawing-room door.

“If you please, ma’am, Mrs. Morris has called, and she wants to know if it would disturb you very much to see her?”