Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/111

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong.”

“Exactly.” Lady Fitz-Smith nodded as she bent her head again over her knitting. “But isn’t it sometimes difficult to know which is which?”

“It ought not to be,” said Margaret firmly.

“No. But isn’t it?”

Mrs. Garrison was bewildered, not by what the Dowager said, because she was so clearly in the wrong, but because such things could be said by one who was evidently a “good” woman.

“Dear Mrs. Garrison,” continued the rich voice, “would you be so kind as to hold my wool while I roll another ball?”

Mrs. Garrison took off her gloves willingly to help the Englishwoman, while that lady explained why she was so anxious to finish the jacket, of which she had promised a dozen to one of her niece’s tenants who was to start a draper’s shop in the spring. It was certainly very kind of Lady Fitz-Smith to spend so much time knitting jackets in such a cause,—unnecessarily kind, the American woman thought, as the wool slipped over her firm white hands to be rolled into a ball by the Dowager. The two women spoke of charities, and Margaret again found cause for surprise in the warm and personal exercise of it which had developed so naturally through centuries of relationship between tenant