He tramped down several steps.
The boy had always thought of himself as being a part of a vague body of people called gentlefolk—a people who were always provided for from some gentlemanly source of livelihood which demanded clean hands and a sense of duty and no manual labour or a shop, quite a species apart from the mere middle-class world, and for whom the working classes provided the comforts of life, cleaning their boots and doing them service. Tradesmen and the labouring class, of course, were bound to earn a livelihood—a thing which he had always felt, without being expressly told so, to be rather a vulgar thing to do; although, of course, it was a very good thing for that sort of people.
As he reached the bottom of the uncarpeted stair, and was about to step on to the drugget of the landing, a door opened, and there came out on to the landing a child of about twelve.
She shook back the nut-brown hair from her clear grey eyes and gazed defiantly at Noll:
“You’re a fool!” she said.
Noll took off his hat, sat down on the bottom step, put his chin in his hands, and gazed at her:
“You’re very pretty,” he said.
“I didn’t say you were an impudent fool,” she said hotly—“I meant a common, vulgar tomfool.”
Noll nodded.
The dainty slender girl before him gazed at him sternly: