“Oh, no, is there heraldic glass on the stairs?” asked May, in a slightly awe-struck tone. “I never saw it.”
Dora, as her friend often declared, really did not always play fair. There had quite distinctly been the satirical note in her own allusion to the heraldic glass, but as soon as May reflected that in the appreciative reverence of her reply, Dora was down upon her at once.
“And why shouldn’t they have heraldic glass as much as your people or mine?” she asked smartly. “They’ve got exactly as many grandfathers and grandmothers as we have, and there’s not the slightest reason to doubt that Mrs. Osborne was a Miss Parkins, and Mr. Parkins’s heir, who, I expect, was far more respectable than my mother’s father, who drank himself to death, though mother always calls it cerebral hæmorrhage. Oh, May, we are all snobs, and I’m not sure the worst snobbishness of all isn’t shown by those who say they came over with William the Conqueror or were descended from Edward the Fourth. Probably the Osbornes didn’t come over with William the Conqueror but were here long before, only they don’t happen to know who they were.”
“I know, that is just it,” said May, calmly. “They don’t know who they were, and yet they put up their coats of arms.”
Dora looked at her friend in contempt.
“I suppose you think you have scored over that,” she said.
“Not in the least. I am only pointing out perfectly obvious things.”
“Then why do it?” said Dora. “What I am pointing out are not perfectly obvious things. At least they appear not to be to you. The whole affair is a game, stars and garters and ancestors, and coats of arms is all a game. Oh, I don’t say that it isn’t great fun. But it is absurd to take it seriously. What can it matter to you or me whether great-grandpapa was a peer or a bootblack? It only amuses us to think that he was a peer. And if it amuses Mrs. Osborne to think that Mr. Parkins had a coat of arms at all, why shouldn’t she put it up in the hall window? And since, as I said, she was the only child, of course she quarters with the Osborne arms. It’s one of the rules. I believe you are jealous of them, because they are richer than your horrid family.”
Nothing ever roused May except a practical assault upon her personal comfort, and Dora seldom attempted to rouse her. It was invariably hopeless and the present attempt only added another to the list of her failures.
“I think that is partly true,” said May. “I don’t see why common people should have the best of everything. They only have to invent a button or a razor, and all that life offers is theirs. I think it’s deplorable, but it doesn’t make me angry any more than a wet day makes me angry, unless I am absolutely caught in the rain with a new hat. As to coats of arms and things, I think it is rather pleasant to know that one’s grandfather was a gentleman.”