Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/162

160 than to sit with a work-basket in a large lonely saloon, with the pictures of their ancestors looking as if they had indeed lost all sympathy with the living. Besides, a call, in an adjacent street, on one whose milliner is not the same, and whose friends are similar to your own—thus giving ample room for praise and its reverse—such a call is quite another thing from that in the country, which involves, first, a journey through wilds that "seem to lengthen as you go;" and secondly, a luncheon, which it is your duty to eat. Alas! when, in this world, are the agreeable and the necessary united! Then your neighbour is a person whom you see twice a-year—you have not a taste or opinion in common—the news of the one is no news to the other—conversation is a frozen ocean, and

Now these were not mornings to Lady Mandeville's taste. As for the dinners, she had only one comfort, that of abusing them after;—and unspeakable consolation, by the by, in most cases! I cannot see why a taste for the