The old-fashioned farmer's wife, who until her years pressed heavily upon her made the cheese and butter in her husband's dairy, is not so old but that her eyes can distinguish the colour of a ribbon.

She may talk of such things as vanities, and unknown in her day, but for all that a pair of keen eyes criticise skirt, and trimmings, and braidings, and so forth, as displayed up in the Grange pew.

Her daughter, who is quite young--for in her mother's time farming people did not marry till late in life--brings a still keener pair of eyes to bear in the same direction.
The bonnets from Regent Street are things to think over and talk of.

The old lady disinters her ancient finery; the girl, by hook or crook, is determined to dress in the fashion.

If one farmer's wife is a fine lady, why not another?
Do not even the servant girls at the Grange come out twenty times finer than people who have a canvas bag full of sovereigns at home, and many such bags at the bank?
So that the Grange people, though they pay their way handsomely, and plough deep and manure lavishly, and lead the van of agriculture, are not, perhaps, an unmixed good.