"It's a pretty brutal world, ma'am, and if he's going to take his place he'll have to get used to being hammered and hammering back."
"Which is what I object to. If you train boys to be courteous with each other from the start...."
"They'll be quite ladylike when they get into the stock exchange or the prize ring. Look here, Sunshine! The country's over feminized as it is. It's run by women, or by men who think as women, or by men who're afraid of women. Congress is full of them; the courts are full of them; the churches—the churches above all!—are full of them; and you'd make it worse. If Guy hadn't the stuff in him that he has...."
Mrs. Ansley was more than ever like a cornstarch pudding, quivering and undulating, when she rose. "You make it very hard for me, Philip. I was going to ask Whitelaw, here, if when he's anywhere where Guy is—I know Guy will have to go among young men, of course—he'd keep an eye on him, and protect him."
"He doesn't need protection, ma'am. He can take his own part as easily as I can take mine. If there's a row he likes to be in it; and if he's licked he doesn't mind it. If he only had a chance...."
She raised her left hand palm outward, in a gesture of protest. "Thank you! I'm not asking advice as to my own son."
Sailing from the room with the circumambient dignity of ladies when they wore the crinoline, she left Tom with the crestfallen sense of presumption. Half expecting to be ordered from the room, he turned toward his host, who, however, simply reverted to the subject of the summer. He told Tom where he could have lessons in driving, adding that he would charge them to club expenses, as he would the uniform Tom would have to wear. When Mr. Ansley picked up his paper the young man knew the interview was over. With a half-articulate, "Good-night, sir," to which there was no response, he turned and left the room.
The occasion left him with much to think of, chiefly on his own account. It marked his status more clearly than anything that had happened to him yet. He had not been shaken hands with; he had not been asked to sit down. He had not been greeted on arriving; his "good-night" had not been acknowledged when he went away. Mr. Ansley had called him Whitelaw, which was all very well; but when Mrs. Ansley did it, the use of the name was significant. This must be the way in which rich people treated their servants.
Here he had to reason with himself as to what he had been looking for. It was not for recognition on a footing of equality. Of course not! He had no objection to being a servant, since he needed the money. He objected to ... and yet it was not quite tangible. He didn't mind standing up; he didn't mind the absence of a greeting; he didn't mind any one thing in itself. He minded the combination of assumptions, all fusing into one big assumption that he was in essence their inferior. Having this assumption so strongly in their minds, they couldn't but betray it when they spoke to him.