“Oh, you may make fun of me, if you like,” cried Arthur; “but my comfort in thinking of that French grandmother of mine will remain undiminished. I wonder,” he added, more gravely, “I wonder whether you have ever suffered from any of the indignities that your people are sometimes put to, Mrs. Lehmyl. I declare I have been tempted to wring the necks of my fellow Gentiles, now and then.”
“Suffered? I have occasionally been amused. I should not have much self-respect, if any thing like that could cause me suffering. Last summer, for instance, Mrs. Hart and I were in the mountains, at a hotel. Every body, to begin with, was disposed to be very sociable. Then, innocently enough, one day I said we were Jewesses. After that we were left severely alone. I remember, we got into an omnibus one afternoon to drive to the village. A young man and a couple of young ladies—guests at the same house—were already in it. They glared at us quite savagely, and whispered, ’Jews!’ and signaled the driver to stop and let them out. So we had the conveyance to ourselves, for which we were not sorry.”
“I wish I had been there!” cried Arthur, with astonishing energy.
“Why?” asked Mrs. Lehmyl.
“Oh, that young man and I would have had an interview alone,” he answered, in a blood-curdling key.
“He means that he would have given that young man a piece of his mind,” put in Mrs. Hart.
The sound of her voice occasioned Arthur a veritable start. He had forgotten that she was present.
“I hope not,” said Mrs. Lehmyl. “To resent such conduct would lend undue importance to it.”
“All the same it makes my blood boil—the thought that those young animals dared to be rude to you.”
The pronoun “you” was spoken with a significant emphasis. A student of human nature could have inferred volumes from it. Mrs. Hart straightway proceeded to demolish her own claims to be called a student of human nature, if she had any, by construing the syllable in the plural number.