‘I don’t know—­I never heard it,’ said Molly, a little ashamed of her ignorance.

’Oh! that shows you’ve never read Miss Edgeworth’s tales;—­now, have you?  If you had, you’d have recollected that there was such a word, even if you didn’t remember what it was.  If you’ve never read those stories, they would be just the thing to beguile your solitude—­vastly improving and moral, and yet quite sufficiently interesting.  I’ll lend them to you while you’re all alone.’

‘I’m not alone.  I’m not at home, but on a visit to the Miss Brownings.’

’Then I’ll bring them to you.  I know the Miss Brownings; they used to come regularly on the school-day to the Towers.  Pecksy and Flapsy I used to call them.  I like the Miss Brownings; one gets enough of respect from them at any rate; and I’ve always wanted to see the kind of menage of such people.  I’ll bring you a whole pile of Miss Edgeworth’s stories, my dear.’

Molly sate quite silent for a minute or two; then she mustered up courage to speak out what was in her mind.

‘Your ladyship’ (the title was the firstfruits of the lesson, as Molly took it, on paying due respect)—­’your ladyship keeps speaking of the sort of—­the class of people to which I belong as if it was a kind of strange animal you were talking about; yet you talk so openly to me that—­’

‘Well, go on—­I like to hear you.’

Still silence.

‘You think me in your heart a little impertinent—­now, don’t you?’ said Lady Harriet, almost kindly.

Molly held her peace for two or three moments; then she lifted her beautiful, honest eyes to Lady Harriet’s face, and said,—­

‘Yes!—­a little.  But I think you a great many other things.’

’We’ll leave the “other things” for the present.  Don’t you see, little one, I talked after my kind, just as you talk after your kind.  It’s only on the surface with both of us.  Why, I daresay some of your good Hollingford ladies talk of the poor people in a manner which they would consider as impertinent in their turn, if they could hear it.  But I ought to be more considerate when I remember how often my blood has boiled at the modes of speech and behaviour of one of my aunts, mamma’s sister, Lady—­No!  I won’t name names.  Any one who earns his livelihood by an exercise of head or hands, from professional people and rich merchants down to labourers, she calls “persons.”  She would never in her most slip-slop talk accord them even the conventional title of “gentlemen;” and the way in which she takes possession of human beings, “my woman,” “my people,”—­but, after all, it is only a way of speaking.  I ought not to have used it to you; but somehow I separate you from all these Hollingford people.’

‘But why?’ persevered Molly.  ‘I’m one of them.’