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 . Hester was away , or , of course , this would never have happened . She had gone for a month 's visit to distant friends . In that month I lived a lifetime . Hugh Blair courted me as the other girls in Newbridge were courted . He took me out driving and came to see me in the evenings , which we spent for the most part in the garden . I did not like the stately gloom and formality of our old Meredith parlor , and Hugh never seemed to feel at ease there . His broad shoulders and hearty laughter were oddly out of place among our faded , old-maidish furnishings . Mary Sloane was very much pleased at Hugh 's visit .
She had always resented the fact XXXXX I had never had a `` beau , '' seeming to think it reflected some slight or disparagement upon me .
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