Agnes’s face flamed. “No, it isn’t; it may be the way of men like Jimmy, but it isn’t the way gentlemen like Parker Willett do.”
“Why, Nancy!” Jeanie looked at her in astonishment. “You certainly do stand up for Mr. Willett. I think he is handsome and polite and all that, but I always felt that he was hard to get acquainted with; I mean he hasn’t our everyday ways.”
“I’m glad he hasn’t,” Agnes flashed out again.
“Oh, you are very complimentary. Perhaps you don’t like our ways, either. For my part I am too independent, and I hope not so lazy that I like people to wait on me; I would rather do for myself anything that I am strong enough to do, and let the men attend to their own work.”
“I would, too, in a measure; but I like to see a man ready to spare a woman when he can, and I didn’t mean your ways, for your ways are our own, too, but I was thinking of Polly.”
“But you like Polly and try to be like her; you are getting to be quite like her; we have all been thinking so.”
Agnes looked aghast. “I didn’t know it,” she said faintly. “I don’t want to be. Oh, I’m not. I’m not. Polly is a dear, good woman, but—but—Mr. Willett’s sister wouldn’t be like her, nor his mother. I can fancy them, the mother a stately dame, and the sister so dainty and sweet; I wonder he can stand us.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Jeanie, loftily. “We are good enough for any one. If he doesn’t like us, he can leave us. I’m sure nobody cares about having him here, for we are all of a different race, anyhow,—I don’t mean that exactly; but we are Scotch-Irish and like to go with our own kind, and he is a Church of England man and is cold and proud.”
“He’s not; he’s not a bit. I’d like to know who are prouder and more clannish than these same Scotch-Irish, and Mr. Willett says we are self-contained and stand off by ourselves, and that is what all strangers say of us. You shall not say such things of Mr. Willett, Jeanie M’Clean.”
“Well, I declare! I believe you are in love with him,” exclaimed Jeanie. And then Agnes burst into tears, and at the same moment came into her mind a remembrance of how she had teased Jeanie into revealing her heart’s secret, and she told herself that this was her retribution. Jeanie sat still for a moment in a state of surprise. Agnes and Archie had always been associated in her mind as lovers, and her remark was meant not to strike home, but was simply a chance shot directed because of her annoyance.