By Nancy Lord and her companions such pleasures were unregarded.  For the first few days after their arrival at Teignmouth, they sat or walked on the promenade, walked or sat on the pier, sat or walked on the Den—­a long, wide lawn, decked about with shrubs and flower-beds, between sea-fronting houses and the beach.  Nancy had no wish to exert herself, for the weather was hot; after her morning bathe with Jessica, she found amusement enough in watching the people—­most of whom were here simply to look at each other, or in listening to the band, which played selections from Sullivan varied with dance music, or in reading a novel from the book-lender’s,—­ that is to say, gazing idly at the page, and letting such significance as it possessed float upon her thoughts.

She was pleasantly conscious that the loungers who passed by, male and female, gave something of attention to her face and costume.  Without attempting to rival the masterpieces of fashion which invited envy or wonder from all observers, she thought herself nicely dressed, and had in fact, as always, made good use of her father’s liberality.  Her taste in garments had a certain timidity that served her well; by avoiding the extremes of mode, and in virtue of her admirable figure, she took the eye of those who looked for refinement rather than for extravagance.  The unconsidered grace of her bearing might be recognised by all whom such things concerned; it by no means suggested that she came from a small house in Camberwell.  In her companions, to be sure, she was unfortunate; but the over-modest attire and unimpressive persons of Mrs. Morgan and Jessica at least did her the office of relief by contrast.

Nancy had made this reflection; she was not above it.  Yet her actual goodness of heart saved her from ever feeling ashamed of the Morgans.  It gratified her to think that she was doing them a substantial kindness; but for her, they would have dragged through a wretched summer in their unwholesome, jimcrack house, without a breath of pure air, without a sight of the free heaven.  And to both of them that would probably have meant a grave illness.

Mrs. Morgan was a thin, tremulous woman, with watery eyes and a singular redness about the prominent part of her face, which seemed to indicate a determination of blood to the nose.  All her married life had been spent in a cheerless struggle to maintain the externals of gentility.  Not that she was vain or frivolous—­indeed her natural tendencies made for homeliness in everything—­but, by birth and by marriage connected with genteel people, she felt it impossible to abandon that mode of living which is supposed to distinguish the educated class from all beneath it.  She had brought into the world three sons and three daughters; of the former, two were dead, and of the latter, one,—­in each case, poverty of diet having proved fatal to a weak constitution.  For close upon thirty years the family had lived in houses of which the rent was