books are above the ladies of this village," said she.

"I don't know as I think they are so much above as too far to one
side," said Flora. "Sometimes it's longitude, and sometimes it's
latitude that separates people. I don't know but we are just as far
from Ibsen and Maeterlinck as they are from us."

Louisa and I thought Flora might be right. At all events, we did not
wish to set ourselves up in opposition to her. We never carried the
books into the society, and we never read Mrs. Jameson's letter about
them, though we did feel somewhat guilty, especially as we reflected
that Flora had never forgotten the affair of the jumbles, and might
possibly have allowed her personal feelings to influence her.

"I should feel very sorry," said Louisa to me, "if we were preventing
the women of this village from improving themselves."

"Well, we can wait until next summer, and let Mrs. Jameson take the
responsibility. I don't want to be the means of breaking up the
society, for one," said I.

However, when Mrs. Jameson finally arrived in June, she seemed to be
on a slightly different tack, so to speak, of improvement. She was
not so active in our literary society and our sewing circle as she
had been the summer before, but now, her own sphere having possibly
enlarged, she had designs upon the village in the abstract.

Hannah Bell came over from the West Corners to open the house for
them, and at five o'clock we saw the Grover stage rattle past with
their trunks on top, and Grandma Cobb and the girls and Cobb looking