Free The Way Home by Henry Handel Richardson

just what a wasps' nest of caste and prejudice they had fallen into. Social life in Buddlecombe was the most complicated affair under the sun: was divided into innumerable grades; made up of a series of cliques, rising one above the other and fitting as exactly as a set of Japanese boxes. No such simple matter, and that was a fact, for a pair of newcomers to find themselves to rights in it. But they in their ignorance had pranced boldly in, where those who knew better, walked warily and with discretion. The vicar's wife had taken Mary up: yes; but by now Mahony had come to see that she would be equally attentive to any one who might prove useful in helping to run the parish, or in slaving for foreign missions. And he began to doubt whether, often as Mary went to the vicarage, she was invited to the really select parties there given. She had never, for instance, met the Blakeneys of "The Towers," people he knew to be hand-in-glove with the vicaress. Mary either did not notice or, noticing, heed such trivial details she just laughed and said: "Rubbish!" or "You are fanciful, Richard!" -- but he most emphatically did, and thanked you for being put off with the second best. And besides her insensitiveness to slights, she was hopelessly obtuse when it came to observing the invisible but cast-iron barriers with which the various cliques hedged themselves round, to keep those a step lower in the scale from coming too near.
    "Not shake hands with that nice old Mr. Dandy just because he was once in trade? I never heard such a thing!" In Ballarat Mary had been used to feel flattered did her grocer -- rich, influential, a trustee of the church, a member of the Horticultural Society -- emerge from behind the counter specially to chat with her. "I think we should just make a beginning."
    "Indeed and you'll put your foot in it with a vengeance, my dear, if you try anything of that kind here. . . when I'm still struggling to get a stand."
    "Oh well, of course, if you look at it that way.... But all the same . . . when I think . . ." Her sentence tailed off into a speaking silence.
    He understood. "Tempi passati, love! Nowadays, we must do as Rome does. -- Recollect, too, my dear, these things may seem trifling enough to you . . . and me. . . who have knocked about the world; but to people here they're the very A B C of good breeding -- have been sucked in with their mother's milk. We mustn't let ourselves appear ignoramuses of the first water."
    "But I've got to be friendly with your patients, Richard, whoever they are."
    "True. But even you must draw the line somewhere, you know."
    "I'm afraid I don't; I'm not clever enough. It doesn't seem human either. For we're all the same flesh and blood."
    Yes, for the countless niceties and distinctions of social etiquette, Mary had, as she confessed, little aptitude. It sometimes seemed that, if a mistake was possible, she made it.
    The two chief houses in Buddlecombe, the "Hall" and the "Court," were closed when the Mahonys settled there, the families being respectively abroad and in residence in London. During their absence the temporary leader, who gave the sign and set the key, and to whom the vicar deferred with his treacliest smile, was the owner of "Toplands." This was a Mrs. Challoner, a widow with two sons, and a person of great wealth and importance -- "Toplands" was really the biggest and most up-to-date place in the neighbourhood, both Hall and Court being cramped by comparison and mouldy with age. But let the Trehernes or the Saxeby-Corbetts show so much as the tips of their noses, and this lady subsided with extraordinary swiftness, collapsed like a jack-in-the-box; for, though her husband's antecedents were irreproachable, there was, on her own side, some shadowy connection with "malt" which could never be forgotten or forgiven her; or at least "only by the grace of God. . . or of the Saxeby-Corbetts."
    Mrs. Challoner was a member of the vicarage sewing-circle; and here she met Mary,