“Yanna’s feelings!” cried Mrs. Filmer.
“Yes; and they are very precious to me; more so than my own feelings.”
“Or than mine? Speak out, Harry. Be as brutal as you want to be. I might as well know the worst now as again.”
“I do not care for New York. I do not care for the preparations you have made. I will not go out at all. I have given myself to this society nonsense, because it pleased you, mother; but I can do so no longer. How can I dress, and dance, and make compliments 109 when I wish I were dead? Yes, I do! Life has not a charm left.”
“Your father, your sister!”
“Oh, mother! they are not Yanna. If you are perishing for water, wine will not take its place.”
“You are very ungrateful, and if I call you ungrateful I can call you nothing worse. Remember how I have planned and saved; how I have bowed here, and becked there, in order to gain the social position we now enjoy. Without my help, would you have got into the best clubs? Would you visit in the houses where you are now welcome?”
“I know; but I do not value these things. Yanna has taught me better.”
“Harry, you make me lose all patience. It is a shameful thing to tell me now, after my labor, after you have reaped the harvest of it, that you do not care; to put that Van Hoosen girl in the place of all your social advantages, and of all your kindred. It is outrageous! Why, the man I bought my chickens from was a Van Hoosen! And I was so magnanimous that I never named it to Miss Van Hoosen. Any other lady would have asked her if he was a relative, just for the pleasure of setting her down a little. I did not.”
“You might easily have asked Yanna. She has no false pride.”