discomfiture; but it frequently happens that the victim of the strife is a completely innocent person, only accidentally concerned.
Stimulated by this corrective of despondency, Patty resumed all her natural smartness, flung up her head, so that all her artificial flowers thrilled again, raised and expanded her parasol, and marched along like an army with banners, taking up with her own slim person and shadow the whole of the road. Humbler passersby, even the new curate, who was not yet acquainted with the parishioners, got out of her way, recognising her importance, and that sentiment as if of everything belonging to her that was in her walk, in her bearing, and, above all, in the parasol, which was carried, as is done still in Eastern countries, as a symbol of sovereignty. Mr. Tripley, the curate, stumbled aside upon the grassy margin of the road in his awe and respect, while Patty swept on; though there was something in her members that love of ancient habit, scientifically known as a survival which made the impulse to curtsey to him almost more than she could resist. She did get over it, however, as wise men say we get over the use of a claw or a tail which is no longer necessary to us. Patty went along the high-road as far as the entrance to the village street, and then turned down to where, at the very end of it, there stood a little house in a little garden which was one of the ornaments of the place. It was a house to a stranger somewhat difficult to characterise. It was not the doctors or even the schoolmasters, still less the curates, unless he had happened (as was the case) to be an unmarried young man, who might have been so lucky as to attain to lodgings in that well-cared-for dwelling. But, no; it was to well cared for to take lodgers, or entertain any extraneous element; it was, in short, not to be diffuse, the house of Miss Hewitt, the sister of Richard Hewitt of the Seven Thorns, and aunt to Patty; the very Miss Hewitt in her own person, who had sat at the window upstairs making the vandyke in tape for her new petticoat, and to whom Sir Giles, in the days of his youth, and all the gentlemen had taken off their hats. Those had been the palmy days of the Seven Thorns, and the Hewitt of those times had been able to leave something to his daughter, which, along with a bit of money which she was supposed to have inherited from her mother, had enabled Miss Hewitt to establish herself in great comfort, not to say luxury, in Rose Cottage. It was a small slice of a house, which looked as if it had been cut off from a row and set down alone there. Its bricks were redder than any other bricks in the village, indeed they were reddened with paint as high up as the parlour window; the steps were whiter, being carefully whitened every day; the door was very shiny and polished, almost like the panel of a carriage, in green; the window of the parlour, at the side of the door, was shielded by hangings of spotless starched muslin, and had a small muslin blind secured across the lower half of it by a band of brass polished like gold. The door had a brass handle and a brass knocker. There was not a weed in the garden, which presented a brilliant border of flowers, concealing the more profitable wealth of a kitchen garden behind. Several great rose bushes were there, justifying the name of the cottage; but Miss Hewitt had taken down those which clustered once upon the walls, as untidy things which could not be kept in order. Rose Cottage was the pride, if also in some respects the laughing-stock, of the village; but it was the object of a certain adoration to the members of the clan of Hewitt, who considered it a credit to them and proof of their unblemished respectability far and near.
Patty knew too well to invade the virginal purity of the front door, the white step, or the brass knocker; but went round through the garden to the back, where her aunt was busy preparing fruit for the jam, for which Miss Hewitt was famous, with the frightened little girl, who was her maid-of-all-work, in attendance. All the little girls who succeeded each other in Miss Hewitts service had a scared look; but all the same they were lucky little girls, and competed for by all the housekeepers round when they attained an age to be handed on to other service as certain to be admirably trained. She was a trim old lady, a little taller than Patty, and stouter, as became her years, but with all the vivacity and alertness which distinguished the women of that ancient house. She was a person of discernment also, and soon perceived that this was not a mere visit of ceremony, but that there was matter for advice in Pattys eye, and not that interest in the fruit, and its exact readiness for preserving, which would have been natural to a young woman in Pattys position had there been no other object in her mind. Miss
Hewitt accordingly, though with regret, suspended her important operations, breathing a secret prayer that the delay might not injure the colour of her jam, and led the way into the parlour. To describe that parlour would occupy me gratefully for at least a couple of pages, but I forbear. The reader may perhaps be able to fill up the suggestion; if not, he (she?) will probably hear more about it later on.