She could see him swell with offended dignity. “Good morning,” he said, and turned away without lifting his hat.
“And you have very bad manners,” she added.
“Eh?... What’s that?”
“Yes. And I imagine you are awfully selfish and self-centered. You don’t think about anybody but yourself, do you? You—you imagine the universe has its center in Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell, and you look down on everybody who hasn’t a lot of degrees to string after his name. You don’t like people.” She paused and snapped a question at him. “How much did they pay you for being superintendent of schools?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars a year,” he said, the answer being surprised out of him.
“Doesn’t that take down your conceit?”
“Conceit!... Conceit!...”
“Yes—a good carpenter earns more than that. The world can’t set such a high value on you if it pays a mechanic more than it does you.”
“I told you,” he said, impatiently, “that the world is silly and ignorant.”
“It is you who are silly and ignorant.”