Farrinder
spoke in the tone of one who took views so wide that they might easily,
at first, before you could see how she worked round, look almost
meretricious; she was conscious of a scope that exceeded the first
flight of your imagination. She urged upon her companion the idea of
labouring in the world of fashion, appeared to attribute to her familiar
relations with that mysterious realm, and wanted to know why she
shouldn't stir up some of her friends down there on the Mill-dam?
Olive Chancellor received this appeal with peculiar feelings. With her
immense sympathy for reform, she found herself so often wishing that
reformers were a little different. There was something grand about Mrs.
Farrinder; it lifted one up to be with her: but there was a false note
when she spoke to her young friend about the ladies in Beacon Street.
Olive hated to hear that fine avenue talked about as if it were such a
remarkable place, and to live there were a proof of worldly glory. All
sorts of inferior people lived there, and so brilliant a woman as Mrs.
Farrinder, who lived at Roxbury, ought not to mix things up. It was, of
course, very wretched to be irritated by such mistakes; but this was not
the first time Miss Chancellor had observed that the possession of
nerves was not by itself a reason for embracing the new truths.
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