Mrs Thistleton's Princess by Antonio Hope

The Great Ones of the Earth do not come our way much down at Southam Parva. Our Member's wife is an "Honourable," and most of us, in referring to her, make express mention of that rank; moreover she comes very seldom. In the main our lot lies among the undistinguished, and our table of precedence is employed in determining the dividing lines between "Esquire," "Mr," and plain "John Jones" -- a humble, though no doubt a subtle, inquiry into the gradations of Society. So I must confess to feeling a thrill when I read Mrs Thistleton's invitation to dinner at the Manor. Thistleton is lord of the manor -- by purchase, not by inheritance -- and lives in the old house, proceeding every day to town, where he has a fine practice as a solicitor (Bowes, Thistleton, & Kent) in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mrs Thistleton and the children (there are eight, ranging from Tom, nineteen, to Molly, seven, so that the practice needs to be fine), are, however, quite country folk. Indeed, Mrs Thistleton comes of a county family -- in a county situated, I must not say judiciously but perhaps luckily, at the other end of England from ours; distance prevents cavil in such matters, and, practically speaking, Mrs Thistleton can say what she pleases about her parental stock, besides exhibiting some highly respectable coat-of-armoured silver to back her discreet vaunts. Mrs Thistleton is always discreet; indeed, she is, in my opinion, a woman of considerable talent, and the way in which she dealt with the Princess -- with the problem of the Princess -- confirmed the idea I had of her.

The mention of the Princess brings me back to the card of invitation, though I must add, in a minor digression, that the Thistletons are the only people in Southam Parva who employ printed cards of invitation -- the rest of us would not get through a hundred in a lifetime, and therefore write notes. The invitation card, then, sent to me by Mrs Thistleton was headed as follows:"To have the honour of meeting Her Royal Highness the Princess Vera of Boravia." Subsequent knowledge taught me that the "Royal" was an embellishment of Mrs Thistleton's -- justifiable for aught I know, since the Princess had legitimate pretensions to the throne, though her immediate line was not at this time in occupation of it -- but never employed by the Princess herself. However, I think Mrs Thistleton was quite right to do the thing handsomely, and I should have gone even without the "Royal," so there was no real deception. All of us who were invited went: the Rector and his wife, the Doctor and his wife, old Mrs Marsfold (the Major-General had, unfortunately, died the year before), Miss Dunlop (of the Elms), and Charley Miles (of the Stock Exchange).