“What business have you, anyway,” she asked him, “to be associating with that ordinary class of people? They’re not your kind. What have you in common with them, I should like to know?”
“Well,” replied Hal, “they have hearts and brains and lungs and stomachs just as I have. They get hot and cold and hungry and thirsty just as I do. And whatever pleasant things there are in life they are just as well fitted as I am to enjoy them. It seems to me that we have a good deal in common.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” she ejaculated. “You know very well what I mean. And you know you can’t afford to be linked up with such a fellow, for instance, as this Donatello. Why, his paper is a disgrace to the city. Did you read what he had in it last week again about the National Guard?”
“Yes. He was rather severe on us.”
“Severe! It was positively scandalous! Why, his sheet ought to be suppressed by the authorities, and he, himself, put in jail for a month and fed on bread and water.”
“I’m afraid the fast-cure wouldn’t be a prophylactic for radicalism, Aunt Sarah.”
“There you go with your big words again! But this is no joke, young man. Bad company is bound to have its effect. The next thing you know they’ll be putting you out of the National Guard.”
“Perhaps I’ll deserve it.”
“If you do deserve it, I hope to goodness they’ll do it! You just go along now and behave yourself, and drop your socialistic and anarchistic heresies, and shake your bad company, and be a soldier and a gentleman.”