"I knew the Cabinet people got eight thousand." She was gazing dreamily out toward the purple horizon, seemed as far as its mountains from worldliness.
"Hadn't you thought out how we were to live on that sum? You are aware I've practically nothing but my salary."
"I suppose I ought to think of those things—ought to have thought of them," replied she with a vague, faint smile. "But really—well, we've been brought up rather carelessly—I suppose some people would call it badly—and—"
"You take me for a fool, don't you?" he interrupted roughly.
She elevated her eyebrows.
"I wish I had a quarter for every row between your people and your grandmother on the subject of money. I wish I had a dollar for every row you and she have had about it."
He again vented his boisterous laugh; her nerves had not been so rasped since her wedding day. "Come, Margaret," he went on, "I know you've been brought up differently from me. I know I seem vulgar to you in many ways. But because I show you I appreciate those differences, don't imagine I'm an utter ass. And I certainly should be if I didn't know that your people are human beings."
She looked guilty as well as angry now. She felt she had gone just the one short step too far in her aristocratic assumptions.
He went on in the tone of one who confidently expects that there will be no more nonsense: "When you married me you had some sort of idea how we'd live."
"I assumed you had thought out those things or you'd not have married me," cried she hotly. In spite of her warnings to herself she couldn't keep cool. His manner, his words were so inflammatory that she could not hold herself from jumping into the mud to do battle with him. She abandoned her one advantage—high ground; she descended to his level. "You knew the sort of woman I was," she pursued. "You undertook the responsibility. I assume you are man enough to fulfill it."