Page:Hope--Sophy of Kravonia.djvu/38

SOPHY OF KRAVONIA The immediate result of this disposition of hers was unhappy, and it is not hard to sympathize with the feelings of the Brownlows. Their benevolence was ample, but it was not unconscious; their benefits, which were very great, appeared to them exhaustive, not only above what Sophy might expect, but also beyond what she could imagine. They had picked her up from the road-side and set her on the way to that sort of kingdom with the prospect of which Basil Williamson had tried to console her. The Squire was an estimable man, but one of small mind; he moved among the little—the contented lord of a pin-point of the earth. Mrs. Brownlow was a profoundly pious woman, to whom content was a high duty, to be won by the performance of other duties. If the Squire detected in the girl signs of ingratitude to himself, his wife laid equal blame on a rebellion against Heaven. Sophy knew—if not then, yet on looking back—what they felt; her references to them are charged with a remorse whose playful expression (obstinately touched with scorn as it is) does not hide its sincerity. She soon perceived, anyhow, that she was getting a bad character; she, the cook in posse, was at open war with Mrs. Smilker, the cook in esse; though, to be sure, "Smilker" might have done something to reconcile her to "Grouch!"

Mrs. Brownlow naturally ranged herself on the side of constituted authority, of the superior rank in the domestic hierarchy. Moreover, it is likely that Mrs. Smilker was right in nine cases out of ten, at all events; Sophy recognized that probability in after-life; none the less, she allows herself more than once to speak of "that beast of a Smilker." Mere rectitude as such never appealed to her; that comes out in another rather instructive comment, which she 20