I never was able to have a word with her now, never could hear her darling voice repeat my name in those soft accents I loved so well. It was very hard—very hard, indeed! You see, I had ample reasons, beyond the requirements of mere social etiquette, for wishing to know Mrs Clyde.

Our suburb, you must know, was an extremely quiet place—“remote, unfriended, solitary, slow.”

Although everybody knew everybody, who happened to be anybody at all, there was not much of current sociability and party giving. We were not sociable. On the contrary, we were a very humdrum lot; rising early and going to town to our business and daily toil—such of us as had any sort of business to attend to—and coming back at a fixed regular hour. We were in the habit of having our respective dinners and teas, and, mayhap, suppers, at certain appointed times and seasons—also duly regulated—and subsequently going to bed, to recruit for the same routine on the morrow, without any excitements, or renovation and destruction of tissue worth speaking of.

A “tea-party” was quite a sensation in the parish of Saint Canon’s—equivalent to one of the queen’s garden fêtes. Beyond school treats and working parties, to which latter only the clergy and Lady Dorcases were admitted, and the anniversary of Christmas, when we sometimes did indulge a little in wholesome but subdued gaiety, we went on from year’s beginning to year’s end without balls, or dinners, or dances, or any of those resources which fashionable people have for killing time and keeping up acquaintanceship.

We were not “high-toned” people; quite the reverse, in fact, as, I believe, I have previously described. We only “dropped in” of an evening to see friends, and spend a quiet hour or two over bézique and music. On these occasions, a carpet cotillon or quadrille has been sometimes indulged in; but it was the exception and not the rule. We were generally satisfied with much milder pastime; our visits rarely exceeding the interval between tea and “supper” time, when we partook of a friendly, though seedy, abernethy and glass of wine or beer; and then went home virtuously to bed.

Our society being thus constituted, it became a matter almost of impossibility to meet any one particular person frequently, excepting out in the street, unless you had the entrée of their house. Hence, I never could chat with Min, as I had done at the decorations; and, naturally, I felt very much aggrieved thereanent.

What made it additionally provoking to me was, that 

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