When Laura was about to go to the young man's house, her mother stops her, saying "Don't on any account--" What did this represent?

Crucial to understanding this excellent short story is an
awareness of how Mansfield generally in her writing depicted the division of the classes
in her native New Zealand. In this and other stories, Mansfield deals with the way in
which characters gain class consciousness, or become aware of their social position in
relation to the social position of others, and how the must act accordingly. Thus it is
that in this story it is acceptable for Laura to go and take a basket of food to the
grieving working-class family that has just lost its head, but it was not acceptable for
the party to be cancelled for such a trifling reason. Of course, because it was Laura
who displayed her innocence or naivety and lack of class consciousness by insisting that
the party be cancelled, the mother was probably going to advise her daughter not to do
anything that would fall out of the behaviour expected by someone of Laura's station or
class.

This of course points to the innate superiority that
people of a higher class believe they have and the difference in behaviour that emerges
as a result. In this story, as in much of her fiction, Mansfield examines this
discrepancy and argues for more compassion, understanding and better treatment of the
working class.