Sometimes Sally went with her to a small impromptu dance or a musical
at-home in the purlieus of Chelsea. But never before had she
announced that she was going out by herself. Mrs. Hewson did not
profess to have any control over the morals of her lodgers, so long
as they did not reflect in any way upon her own respectability; but
she could not refrain from that British desire for interference in
other people's affairs in the cause of morality itself.
Morality itself, not as any means to an end, but just its bare
superficial display of conventional morals, is treasure in heaven
to the average English mind. And their morality itself is a poor
business--cheap at the best. To be respectable, to do what others
expect of you, is the backbone of all their virtue. It has been said,
we are a nation of shopkeepers. If that is true, then all the shops
are in one street, packed tight, the one against the other. For we
are a nation of neighbours too, prone to do what is being done next
door, and a lax king upon the throne of England could turn our morals
upside down. All things are fashions--even moralities--they take
longer to come and longer to go, but they change with the rest of
things nevertheless, and we follow, doing what is at the moment the
thing to do.
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