She had yachted and hunted, and bathed and danced, she had dined
with the pompous Lord Mayor of London; she had hung on the braided
coat sleeve of high military relics of modern antiquity, and had been
kissed on both cheeks by all the wrinkled-lipped dowagers of the
surrounding country.
She had been riding and driving, eating and drinking, walking and
talking, with magnates of every age, sex and condition. "At first it
perfectly appalled me, Amey love," she wrote in her strange, facetious
way, "none but the upper, upper cream of humanity wherever I went. Of
course it is taken for granted that I am worthy of the great
privileges extended to me. Everything is so intensely exclusive in
this Christian country. People whose hands are soiled with the stain
of labour, I don't care how refined or how honest it is, never by any
chance find themselves at the mahogany board of aristocracy.
Coat-sleeves bearing the finger-marks of honourable industry could not
safely rub against the sleek broadcloth of high-life unless by
sacrificing some of their beautiful (?) hieroglyphics and forfeiting
to some extent the reputations they have earned and not inherited."
"I wonder what some of these starched patricians would do in our
country, Amey? for there respectable commercial industry is wined and
dined without question by Her Majesty's worthy representatives, the
least evil, I suppose, would be the complete loss of appetite, that
would be sure to assail them.
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