CHAPTER XXVI.
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS--CLIQUE--THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE--OUT VISITING--HOUSE-PRIDE--DRESSMAKING.
Eleanor and I were not always at home.

We generally went visiting somewhere, at least once a year.
I think it was good for us.

Great as were the advantages of the life I now shared over an existence wasted in a petty round of ignoble gossip and social struggle, it had the drawback of being almost too self-sufficing, perhaps--I am not certain--a little too laborious.

I do think, but for me, it must, at any rate, have become the latter.

I am so much less industrious, energetic, clever and good in every way than Eleanor, for one thing, that my very idleness holds us back; and I think a taste for gaiety (I simply mean being gay, not balls and parties), and for social pleasure, and for pretty things, and graceful "situations" runs in my veins with my French blood, and helps to break the current of our labours.
We led lives of considerable intellectual activity, constant occupation, and engrossing interest.