The house lay in the
bosom of poetry; and the winds that shouted like a triumphant army
through the mountain glens, or in gentle zephyrs sighed upon the lake,
and gambolled with the ripples, made music around it.
The change, the beauty, I had almost said the deliciousness of their
place of abode, had effected a wondrous improvement in the health of
Maria; yet her mother was not happy. She was not treated by her
neighbours with the obsequious reverence which she believed to be due to
persons possessed of twenty thousand pounds. The fashionable ladies in
the neighbourhood, also, called her "a mean person"--"a nobody"--"an
upstart of yesterday." In truth, there were not a few who so spoke,
because they envied the wealth of the Sims, and were resolved to humble
them.
An opportunity for them to do so soon occurred. A subscription ball or
assembly, patronized by all the fashionables in the district, was to
take place at Keswick. Mrs. Sim, in some measure from a desire of
display, and also, as she said, to bring out Maria, put down her
husband's name, her own, and their daughter's, on the list. Many of the
personages above referred to, on seeing the names of the Sim family on
the subscription paper, turned upon their heel, and exclaimed--"Shocking!"
But the important evening arrived.
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