The Debtor | Page 2

day which floated in through the open
windows of the coach.
It was a wonderful day in May. The cherry-trees were in full bloom,
and tremulous with the winged jostling of bees, and the ladies inhaled
the sweetness intermingled with their own Russian violet in a bouquet
of fragrance. It was warm, but there was the life of youth in the air; one
felt the bound of the pulse of the spring, not its lassitude of passive
yielding to the forces of growth.
The yards of the village homes, or the grounds, as they were commonly
designated, were gay with the earlier flowering shrubs, almond and
bridal wreath and Japanese quince. The deep scarlet of the
quince-bushes was evident a long distance ahead, like floral torches.
Constantly tiny wings flashed in and out the field of vision with
insistences of sweet flutings. The day was at once redolent and
vociferous.
"It is a beautiful day," said Mrs. Van Dorn.
"Yes, it is beautiful," echoed Mrs. Lee, with fervor.
Her faded blue eyes, under the net-work of ingratiating wrinkles,
looked aside, from self-consciousness, out of the coach window at a
velvet lawn with a cherry-tree and a dark fir side by side, and a
Japanese quince in the foreground.
After passing the house, both ladies began pluming themselves,
carefully rubbing on their white gloves and asking each other if their
bonnets were on straight.
"Your bonnet is so pretty," said Mrs. Lee, admiringly.
"It's a bonnet I have had two years, with a little bunch of violets and
new strings," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with conscious virtue.
"It looks as if it had just come out of the store," said Mrs. Lee. She was
vainly conscious of her own headgear, which was quite new that spring,

and distinctly prettier than the other woman's. She hoped that Mrs. Van
Dorn would remark upon its beauty, but she did not. Mrs. Van Dorn
was a good woman, but she had her limitations when it came to
admiring in another something that she had not herself.
Mrs. Lee's superior bonnet had been a jarring note for her all the way.
She felt in her inmost soul, though she would have been loath to admit
the fact to herself, that a woman whom she had invited to make calls
with her at her expense had really no right to wear a finer bonnet--that
it was, to say the least, indelicate and tactless. Therefore she remarked,
rather dryly, upon the beauty of a new pansy-bed beside the drive into
which they now turned. The bed looked like a bit of fairy carpet in
royal purples and gold.
"I call that beautiful," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with a slight emphasis on
the that, as if bonnets were nothing; and Mrs. Lee appreciated her
meaning.
"Yes, it is lovely," she said, meekly, as they rolled past and quite up to
the front-door of the house upon whose mistress they were about to
call.
"I wonder if Mrs. Morris is at home," said Mrs. Van Dorn, as she got a
card from her case.
"I think it is doubtful, it is such a lovely day," said Mrs. Lee, also
taking out a card.
Samson Rawdy threw open the coach door with a flourish and assisted
the ladies to alight. He had a sensation of distinct reverence as the odor
of Russian violet came into his nostrils.
"When them ladies go out makin' fashionable calls they have the best
perfumery I ever seen," he was fond of remarking to his wife.
Sometimes he insisted upon her going out to the stable and sniffing in
the coach by way of evidence, and she would sniff admiringly and
unenviously. She knew her place. The social status of every one in

Banbridge was defined quite clearly. Those who were in society wore
their honors easily and unquestioned, and those who were not went
their uncomplaining ways in their own humble spheres.
Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Henry Lee, gathering up their silken raiment
genteelly, holding their visiting-cards daintily, went up the front-door
steps, and Mrs. Lee, taking that duty upon herself, since she was Mrs.
Van Dorn's guest, pulled the door-bell, having first folded her
handkerchief around her white glove.
"It takes so little to soil white gloves," said she, "and I think it is
considerable trouble to send them in and out to be cleaned."
"I clean mine with gasolene myself," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with the
superiority of a woman who has no need for such economies, yet
practises them, over a woman who has need but does not.
"I never had much luck cleaning them myself," said Mrs. Lee,
apologetically.
"It is a knack," admitted Mrs. Van Dorn. Then they waited in silence,
listening for an approaching footstep.
"If she isn't at