doing of 'good' to others; from very childhood she had never doubted
that she was in a position to do this, and that those to whom she did
good, although they might kick against it as inconvenient, must admit
that it WAS their 'good.' The thought: 'They don't admit that I am
superior!' had never even occurred to her, so completely was she
unselfconscious, in her convinced superiority. It was hard, indeed, to
be flung against such outspoken rudeness. It shook her more than she
gave sign of, for she was not by any means an insensitive woman--shook
her almost to the point of feeling that there was something in the
remonstrance of those dreadful young people. Yet, how could there be,
when no one knew better than she that the laborers on the Malloring
estate were better off than those on nine out of ten estates; better
paid and better housed, and--better looked after in their morals. Was
she to give up that?--when she knew that she WAS better able to tell
what was good for them than they were themselves. After all, without
stripping herself naked of every thought, experience, and action since
her birth, how could she admit that she was not better able? And slowly,
in the white room with the moss-green carpet, she recovered, till there
was only just a touch of soreness left, at the injustice implicit in
their words. Those two had been 'miserably brought up,' had never had
a chance of finding their proper place, of understanding that they were
just two callow young things, for whom Life had some fearful knocks in
store. She could even feel now that she had meant that saying: 'I am
sorry for you two!' She WAS sorry for them, sorry for their want of
manners and their point of view, neither of which they could help, of
course, with a mother like that. For all her gentleness and sensibility,
there was much practical directness about Mildred Malloring; for her, a
page turned was a page turned, an idea absorbed was never disgorged; she
was of religious temperament, ever trimming her course down the exact
channel marked out with buoys by the Port Authorities, and really