I set him down on the ground, and Sally and I walked on together without speaking. But at last she said, "Penny for your thoughts, deah?"
"I was wondering about--class distinctions in America?" I answered. "I think--oh, I do think it's very silly of you to have any at all. I always supposed, till I knew you and Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, that one person was considered just as good as another in America. And it ought to be like that, in a new country, where you haven't an aristocracy."
"We have two aristocracies," said she. "We go one better than you, for you have only one. We have our Old Families (maybe they wouldn't seem very old to you) and we have Wealth. They both think as much of themselves as your aristocracy does--and mighty little of each other."
"I could understand an aristocracy of brains, in a land like America," I went on, quite fiercely, "but it's no good breaking off from the old country at all if you're to hamper yourselves with anything else. Now if I hadn't heard Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox and Mrs. Van der Windt talking, I should have supposed that in America a man like Mr. Brett, for instance, could be received anywhere. As it is, I suppose--no, nobody could despise him. For myself, I'm proud to know such a brave man. But--but of course we're not likely to meet him again, are we?"
"In Society?" laughed Sally. "Poor fellow, it doesn't look much like it now, does it? Though I believe he's a man in a thousand, and worth six of any of those that Cousin Katherine will let you know--counting Potter, though he is my relative."
"It seems a pity," I said, with a sigh for the mistakes of the whole world--or something.
"What's a pity?"
"Oh, I hardly know. Everything. Isn't it?"
"Yes. And I'm sure that's what our poor, handsome friend is thinking."
"Do you suppose he--minds?"