Mrs. Durgin laughed.
“Never you mind,” she retorted, as she gathered up the coins from the table; “but thar’s enough so’s I’m goin’ ter get them cough-drops fur Nellie, anyhow. So!” And she turned her back and pretended not to hear the faint remonstrances from the woman over by the window. Later, when she had bought the medicine and had placed it in Mrs. Magoon’s hands, the remonstrances were repeated in a higher key, and were accompanied again with an angry snarl against the world in general and automobiles in particular.
“But why do ye hate ’em so?” demanded Mrs. Durgin, “—them autymobiles? They hain’t one of ’em teched ye, as I knows of.”
There was no answer.
“I don’t believe ye knows yerself,” declared the questioner then; and at the taunt the other raised her head.
“Mebbe I don’t,” she flamed, “an’ ’tain’t them I hate, anyway—it’s the folks in ’em. It’s rich folks. I’ve allers hated ’em anywheres, but ‘twa’n’t never so bad as now since them things came. They look so—so comfortable—the folks a-leanin’ back on their cushions; an’ so—so free, as if there wa’n’t nothin’ that could bother ’em. ‘Course I knew before that there was rich folks, an’ that they had fine clo’s an’ good things ter eat, an’ shows an’ parties, an’ spent money; but I didn’t see ’em, an’ now I do. I see ’em, I tell ye, an’ it makes me realize how I ain’t comfortable like they be, nor Nellie ain’t neither!”
“But they ain’t all bad—rich folks,” argued the thin, black-eyed woman, earnestly. “Some of ’em is good.”
The other shook her head.
“I hain’t had the pleasure o’ meetin’ that kind,” she rejoined grimly.
“Well, I have,” retorted Maggie’s mother with some spirit. “Look at that lady ter-night what give Maggie all that money.”