“I shouldn’t be a mite surprised if that girl asked Jim to take her.  It would be just like her.”

“It don’t make any odds whether she did or not,” returned Eva, with no affectation of secrecy.  “I don’t care which way ’twas.”  She sat up straighter than ever, and some men in a passing sleigh turned to look after her.

“I s’pose she don’t think my shawl looks genteel enough to wear,” Mrs. Zelotes said to Fanny; “but she’s dreadful silly.”

They drove through the main street of the city and passed Cynthia Lennox’s house.  Ellen looked at it with the guilt of secrecy.  She thought she saw the lady’s head at a front window, and the front door opened and Cynthia came down the walk with a rich sweep of black draperies, and the soft sable toss of plumes.  “There’s Cynthia Lennox,” said Fanny.  “She’s a handsome-lookin’ woman, ain’t she?”

“She’s most as old as Andrew, but you’d never suspect it,” said Mrs. Zelotes.  She had used to have a fancy that Andrew and Cynthia might make a match.  She had seen no reason to the contrary, and she always looked at Cynthia with a curious sense of injury and resentment when she thought of what might have been.

As Cynthia Lennox swept down the walk to-day, the old lady said, sharply: 

“I don’t see why she should walk any prouder than anybody else.  I don’t know why she should, if she’s right-minded.  The Lennoxes wasn’t any grander than the Brewsters way back, if they have got a little more money of late years.  Cynthia’s grandfather, old Squire Lennox, used to keep the store, and live in one side of it, and her mother’s father, Calvin Goodenough, kept the tavern.  I dunno as she has so much to be proud of, though she’s handsome enough, and shows her bringin’ up, as folks can’t that ain’t had it.”  Fanny winced a little; her bringing up was a sore subject with her.

“Well, folks can’t help their bringin’ up,” she retorted, sharply.

“There’s Lloyd’s team,” Andrew said, quickly, partly to avert the impending tongue-clash between his wife and mother.

He reined his horse to one side at a respectful distance, and Norman H. Lloyd, with his wife at his side, swept by in his fine sleigh, streaming on the wind with black fur tails, his pair of bays stepping high to the music of their arches of bells.  The Brewsters eyed Norman Lloyd’s Russian coat with the wide sable collar turned up around his proud, clear-cut face, the fur-gauntleted hands which held the lines and the whip, for Mr. Lloyd preferred to drive his own blooded pair, both from a love of horseflesh and a greater confidence in his own guidance than in that of other people.  Mr. Lloyd was no coward, but he would have confided to no man his sensations had he sat behind those furnaces of fiery motion with other hands than his own upon the lines.