I began to respect the Bowdens for their inheritance
of good taste and skill and a certain pleasing gift of formality.
Something made them do all these things in a finer way than most
country people would have done them. As I looked up and down the
tables there was a good cheer, a grave soberness that shone with
pleasure, a humble dignity of bearing. There were some who should
have sat below the salt for lack of this good breeding; but they
were not many. So, I said to myself, their ancestors may have sat
in the great hall of some old French house in the Middle Ages, when
battles and sieges and processions and feasts were familiar things.
The ministers and Mrs. Blackett, with a few of their rank
and age, were put in places of honor, and for once that I looked
any other way I looked twice at Mrs. Blackett's face, serene and
mindful of privilege and responsibility, the mistress by simple
fitness of this great day.
Mrs. Todd looked up at the roof of green trees, and then
carefully surveyed the company.
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