“I’m afraid—” it was not easy to put it into the right words—“I’m afraid I was mistaken yesterday. I put you in—in a false position with no necessity for doing so.”
It took her a few seconds to get the force of this. “Do you mean that you didn’t need me to be—to be a shame and a disgrace to you at all?”
“Did I put it in that way?”
“Well, didn’t you?”
The fact that she was now dressed as she was made it more embarrassing to him to be crude than it had been when addressing the homeless and shabby little “drab.”
“I don’t know what I said then. I was—I was upset.”
“And you’re upset very easy, ain’t you?” She corrected herself quickly: “aren’t you?”
“I suppose that’s true. What of it?”
“Oh, nothing. I—I just happen to know a way you can get over that—if you want to.”