I was twenty-five before I ever had a lover. This was not, I
think, because I was more unattractive than other women. The
Merediths had always been the "big" family of Newbridge. The
rest of the people looked up to us, because we were the
granddaughters of old Squire Meredith. The Newbridge young men
would have thought it no use to try to woo a Meredith.
I had not a great deal of family pride, as perhaps I should be
ashamed to confess. I found our exalted position very lonely,
and cared more for the simple joys of friendship and
companionship which other girls had. But Hester possessed it in
a double measure; she never allowed me to associate on a level of
equality with the young people of Newbridge. We must be very
nice and kind and affable to them--_noblesse oblige_, as it
were--but we must never forget that we were Merediths.
When I was twenty-five, Hugh Blair came to Newbridge, having
bought a farm near the village. He was a stranger, from Lower
Carmody, and so was not imbued with any preconceptions of
Meredith superiority. In his eyes I was just a girl like
others--a girl to be wooed and won by any man of clean life and
honest heart. I met him at a little Sunday-School picnic over at
Avonlea, which I attended because of my class. I thought him
very handsome and manly. He talked to me a great deal, and at
last he drove me home. The next Sunday evening he walked up from
church with me.
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