Abby, inheriting all these prejudices, had nevertheless not done so badly; she had taken no time at all to establish herself; she had almost immediately married.  In the social estimates of Elgin the Johnsons were “nice people,” Dr Henry was a fine old figure in the town, and Abby’s chances were good enough.  At all events, when she opened her doors as a bride, receiving for three afternoons in her wedding dress. everybody had “called.”  It was very distinctly understood, of course, that this was a civility that need not lead to anything whatever, a kind of bowing recognition, to be formally returned and quite possibly to end there.  With Abby, in a good many cases, it hadn’t ended there; she was doing very well, and as she often said with private satisfaction, if she went out anywhere she was just as likely as not to meet her brothers.  Elgin society, shaping itself, I suppose, to ultimate increase and prosperity, had this peculiarity, that the females of a family, in general acceptance, were apt to lag far behind the males.  Alec and Oliver enjoyed a good deal of popularity, and it was Stella’s boast that if Lorne didn’t go out much it needn’t be supposed he wasn’t asked.  It was an accepted state of things in Elgin that young men might be invited without their sisters, implying an imperturbability greater than London’s, since London may not be aware of the existence of sisters, while Elgin knew all sorts of more interesting things about them.  The young men were more desirable than the young women; they forged ahead, carrying the family fortunes, and the “nicest” of them were the young men in the banks.  Others might be more substantial, but there was an allure about a young man in a bank as difficult to define as to resist.  To say of a certain party-giver that she had “about every bank clerk in town” was to announce the success of her entertainment in ultimate terms.  These things are not always penetrable, but no doubt his gentlemanly form of labour and its abridgement in the afternoons, when other young men toiled on till the stroke of six, had something to do with this apotheosis of the bank clerk, as well as his invariable taste in tailoring, and the fact that some local family influence was probably represented in his appointment.  Privilege has always its last little stronghold, and it still operates to admiration on the office stools of minor finance in towns like Elgin.  At all events, the sprouting tellers and cashiers held unquestioned sway—­young doctors and lawyers simply didn’t think of competing; and since this sort of thing carries its own penalty, the designation which they shared with so many distinguished persons in history became a byword on the lips of envious persons and small boys, by which they wished to express effeminacy and the substantive of the “stuck-up.”  “D’ye take me fur a bank clurk?” was a form of repudiation among corner loafers as forcible as it was unjustifiable.