But they had met
with no encouragement and they had ceased to come. Then nobody came; not
even the doctor or the clergyman. The two ladies were of one mind on that
point; it was convenient for them to ignore their trifling ailments,
spiritual or bodily. And as soon as they saw that the world renounced
them they adopted a lofty tone and said to each other that they had
renounced the world. For they were proud, Mrs. Moon especially so.
Tollington Moon had married slightly, ever so slightly beneath him, the
Moons again marking a faint descent from the standing of the Quinceys.
But the old lady had completely identified herself, not only with the
Moons, but with the higher branch, which she always spoke of as "_my_
family." In fact she had worn her connection with the Quinceys as a
feather in her cap so long that the feather had grown, as it were, into
an entire bird of paradise. And once a bird of paradise, always a bird of
paradise, though it had turned on the world a somewhat dilapidated tail.
So the two lived on together; so they had always lived. Mrs. Moon
was an old woman before she was five-and-fifty; and before she was
five-and-twenty Juliana's youth had withered away in the sour and
sordid atmosphere born of perishing gentility and acrid personal remark.
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