I thought it an unfair discrimination though it was accidentally correct. John, to be sure, is bigger than I, but why should a big man be any more likely than one of more modest proportions to be a literary light? The worst of it was that John, when I sounded him later, would not own to having felt flattered. He seemed to take it for granted that she should know him at sight—quite as though he had been labelled "distinguished author." But she was very nice to me too, and we both felt at home immediately. John took the aunt in to dinner and I the niece, but it really made no difference, as there were only four of us.
This would be the moment to describe the two ladies if descriptions were in my line. Mrs. Ellerton, I thought, would have been a trifle commonplace if she had not been so perfectly well-bred; but perfect breeding is perhaps too unusual to leave its possessor quite without distinction.
