“We won’t live in a good part. I know enough to know that,” she went on.
“Well, it isn’t as if there were any very bad ones,” I answered reassuringly.
“Why Mr. Nettlepoint says it’s regular mean.”
“And to what does he apply that expression?”
She eyed me a moment as if I were elegant at her expense, but she answered my question. “Up there in the Batignolles. I seem to make out it’s worse than Merrimac Avenue.”
“Worse—in what way?”
“Why, even less where the nice people live.”
“He oughtn’t to say that,” I returned. And I ventured to back it up. “Don’t you call Mr. Porterfield a nice person?”
“Oh it doesn’t make any difference.” She watched me again a moment through her veil, the texture of which gave her look a suffused prettiness. “Do you know him very little?” she asked.
“Mr. Porterfield?”