So Angelica, this morning, was ready to assert that servants were in all ways better than those they served, that poor people were all good and rich ones all bad. She felt a warm glow of friendliness toward the subordinate class, and a profound hostility toward their oppressors. She wanted to swagger about it, to tell Mrs. Russell, loudly, that those jolly, comprehensible people in the kitchen were vastly superior to her in every respect.
She went defiantly about the lower floor, into the library, into the breakfast-room, where the remains of Mr. Eddie’s meal still stood, into the music-room, even into the august drawing-room, where she had never before set foot.
"I don’t care!" she said. "If they don’t like it, they can tell me!"
But she met no one. Thwarted of a victim, she went out upon the veranda and sat down in a rocking-chair, facing the prospect already so monotonous to her—the neat, smooth lawns, the orderly trees, the dignified houses.
"Makes me sick!" she said, aloud. "Nothing to look at—nothing to do!"
Suddenly her chair was tilted back and a hand laid over her eyes—a soft, cool hand. She pushed at it, roughly, and it was lifted, and she saw bending over her the bland, smiling face of the doctor. He was in flannels, well cut, quite correct, but with an air obnoxiously dapper. His white head was bare, and he wore a flower in his coat.
"You let me alone!" said Angelica.
"I can’t!"
"I guess you can!" she observed grimly.
"But you’re so pretty! You’ve no business to be so pretty."