“I haven’t read his book, but our life is simple. I think we are both very simple.”
I looked at Ethel and she and I looked up to the perches above us, and I know that she was thinking that we were very simple to allow a thing of this kind to happen, instead of insisting that our grand visitors come at least to the verandah and meet us upon an equal footing.
“Caroline, they are leading the simple life. Fancy! Was that why you went driving with those colored people yesterday?”
Ethel started to tell the facts in the case, but I rudely interrupted and said,
“Mrs. Guernsea, in the simple life all men are equal, but in real life there are many inequalities. The woman you saw on the back seat was Minerva, our estimable cook, while the man was James, our man-of-all-play.”
I pronounced his title quickly and she did not notice the variation.
“This is the land of the free and theoretically all men are free and equal. As a matter of fact, all men are not so, but up here while we lead the simple life we try to make those with whom we come in contact believe that they are so. You met us yesterday, and yesterday I was driving Minerva and James out. Had you met us to-day, James would have been driving Mrs. Vernon and me out.”
Both Mrs. Guernsea and her lackadaisical daughter accepted what I had to say in the spirit in which I wished them to accept it; as a truth of the simple life, and it was so different from their own lives that for the nonce it interested them to hear about it. Therefore, despite Ethel’s reproving brow-liftings, I went on.
“In our life here in this cottage Minerva does all the cooking, because she is the best cook of the four, just as I do all the reading aloud, because I am the best reader; and Mrs. Vernon does all the embroidery, because she is the best embroiderer; and James—well, we have not yet found what James can do best, but there is one thing—his spirits are never depressed and he heartens us all.”
“How curious. And do you believe that such a state of things would be possible in a more complex life, in New York, for instance?”