Mrs. Van Dorn was as small as her companion, but with a confidence of manner which seemed to push her forward in the field of vision farther than her size warranted.

She was also highly corseted, and much trimmed over her shoulders, which gave an effect of superior size and weight; her face, too, was very full and rosy, while the other’s was narrow and pinched at the chin and delicately transparent.

Mrs. Van Dorn sat quite erect on the very edge of the seat, and so did Mrs. Lee.  Each held her card-case in her two hands encased in nicely cleaned, white kid gloves.  Each wore her best gown and her best bonnet.  The coach was full of black velvet streamers, and lace frills and silken lights over precise knees, and the nodding of flowers and feathers.

There was, moreover, in the carriage a strong odor of Russian violet, which diffused itself around both the ladies.  Russian violet was the calling perfume in vogue in Banbridge.  It nearly overcame the more legitimate fragrance of the spring day which floated in through the open windows of the coach.

It was a wonderful day in May.  The cherry-trees were in full bloom, and tremulous with the winged jostling of bees, and the ladies inhaled the sweetness intermingled with their own Russian violet in a bouquet of fragrance.  It was warm, but there was the life of youth in the air; one felt the bound of the pulse of the spring, not its lassitude of passive yielding to the forces of growth.

The yards of the village homes, or the grounds, as they were commonly designated, were gay with the earlier flowering shrubs, almond and bridal wreath and Japanese quince.  The deep scarlet of the quince-bushes was evident a long distance ahead, like floral torches.  Constantly tiny wings flashed in and out the field of vision with insistences of sweet flutings.  The day was at once redolent and vociferous.

“It is a beautiful day,” said Mrs. Van Dorn.

“Yes, it is beautiful,” echoed Mrs. Lee, with fervor.

Her faded blue eyes, under the net-work of ingratiating wrinkles, looked aside, from self-consciousness, out of the coach window at a velvet lawn with a cherry-tree and a dark fir side by side, and a Japanese quince in the foreground.

After passing the house, both ladies began pluming themselves, carefully rubbing on their white gloves and asking each other if their bonnets were on straight.

“Your bonnet is so pretty,” said Mrs. Lee, admiringly.

“It’s a bonnet I have had two years, with a little bunch of violets and new strings,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, with conscious virtue.

“It looks as if it had just come out of the store,” said Mrs. Lee.  She was vainly conscious of her own headgear, which was quite new that spring, and distinctly prettier than the other woman’s.  She hoped that Mrs. Van Dorn would remark upon its beauty, but she did not.  Mrs. Van Dorn was a good woman, but she had her limitations when it came to admiring in another something that she had not herself.