"It seems to me," said Elisabeth thoughtfully, "that you've got to be good before you can be polite."
"Politeness appears to be what goodness really is," replied Miss Farringdon, "and is an attitude rather than an action. Fine breeding is not the mere learning of any code of manners, any more than gracefulness is the mere learning of any kind of physical exercise. The gentleman apparently, as the Christian really, looks not on his own things, but on the things of others; and the selfish person is always both unchristian and ill-bred."
Elisabeth gazed wistfully up into Miss Farringdon's face. "I should like to be a real gentlewoman, Cousin Maria; do you think I ever shall be?"
"I think it quite possible, if you bear all these maxims in mind, and if you carry yourself properly and never stoop. I can not approve of the careless manners of the young people of to-day, who loll upon easy-chairs in the presence of their elders, and who slouch into a room with constrained familiarity and awkward ease," replied Miss Farringdon, who had never sat in an easy-chair in her life, and whose back was still as straight as an arrow.
So in the afternoon of that day Christopher and Elisabeth attended Mrs. Bateson's tea-party.
The Batesons lived in a clean little cottage on the west side of High Street, and enjoyed a large garden to the rearward. It was a singular fact that whereas all their windows looked upon nothing more interesting than the smokier side of the bleak and narrow street, their pigsties commanded a view such as can rarely be surpassed for beauty and extent in England. But Mrs. Bateson called her front view "lively" and her back view "dull," and congratulated herself daily upon the aspect and the prospect of her dwelling-place. The good lady's ideas as to what constitutes beauty in furniture were by no means behind her opinions as to what is effective in scenery. Her kitchen was paved with bright red tiles, which made one feel as if one were walking across a coral reef, and was flanked on one side with a black oak dresser of unnumbered years, covered with a brave array of blue-and-white pottery. An artist would have revelled in this kitchen, with its delicious effects in red and blue; but Mrs. Bateson accounted it as nothing. Her pride was centred in her parlour and its mural decorations, which consisted principally of a large and varied assortment of funeral-cards, neatly framed and glazed. In addition to these there was a collection of family portraits in daguerreotype, including an interesting representation of Mrs. Bateson's parents sitting side by side in two straight-backed chairs, with their whole family twining round them--a sort of Swiss Family Laocoon; and a picture of Mr. Bateson--in the attitude of Juliet and the attire of a local preacher--leaning over a balcony, which was overgrown with a semi-tropical luxuriance of artificial ivy, and which was obviously too frail to support him. But the masterpiece in Mrs. Bateson's art-gallery was a soul-stirring illustration of the death of the revered John Wesley. This picture was divided into two compartments: the first represented the room at Wesley's house in City Road, with the assembled survivors of the great man's family weeping round his bed; and the second depicted the departing saint flying across Bunhill Fields burying-ground in his wig and gown and bands, supported on either side by a stalwart angel.