Not that the every-day married lady is unsocial--not at all: all comfortable people are social; but she is partial to her own class, and does not care to carry her confidences out of it. She has several intimate friends whom she is fond of meeting; but besides that, she is a sort of freemason in her way, and finds out every-day people by the word and sign. Rank has very little to do with this society, as you will find if you observed her sitting at a cottage door, where, in purchasing a draught of milk, she has recognized a sister. If these two every-day married women had been rocked in the same cradle, they could not talk more intimately; and, indeed, they have heavy matters to talk about, for of all the babies that ever came into this breathing world, theirs were the most extraordinary babies. The miracle is, that any of them are extant after such outrageous measles, and scarlet fevers, and chicken-poxes--prophesied of, so to speak, even before their birth, by memorabilia that might have alarmed Dr. Simson. The interlocutors part very well pleased with each other: the cottager proud to find that she has so much in common with a real lady, and the lady pronouncing the reflection of herself she had met with to be a most sensible individual.
Although careless in this instance of the circumstance of rank, the every-day married lady has but little sympathy with the class of domestic servants. She looks upon her servants, in fact, as in some sort her natural enemies, and her life may therefore be said to be passed at the best in a state of armed neutrality. She commonly proceeds on the allowance system; and this is the best way, as it prevents so many sickening apprehensions touching that leg of mutton. Indeed the appetite of servants is a constant puzzle to her: she can not make it out. She has a sharp eye, too, upon the policeman, and wonders what on earth he always looks down her area for. As for followers, that is quite out of the question. Servants stay long enough upon their errands to talk to all the men and women in the parish; and the idea of having an acquaintance now and then besides--more especially of the male sex--tramping into the kitchen to see them, is wildly unnatural. She tells of a sailor whom she once detected sitting in the coolest possible manner by the fireside. When she appeared, the man rose up and bowed--and then sat down again. Think of that! The artful girl said he was her brother!--and here all the every-day married ladies in the company laugh bitterly. Since that time she has been haunted by a sailor, and smells tar in all sorts of places.