“And you know,” added the rector, “she has been twice lately to our morning services.”
“I know, but that doesn’t necessarily make her congenial. Do you really mean, Robert, that we should treat these people—a person like Mrs. Bradley, for instance,—exactly as our equals?”
“Certainly! Why not? Christ was no respecter of persons.”
“I know. And their husbands? And their children the same as our own? Should I, for instance, let Grace and Robbie play freely with the children on the street back of the rectory?”
“Those children are entitled to the benefit of the culture and good breeding of our own, and they can learn these things only by association.”
“But, Robert, dear, suppose our children should learn things from them that do not belong to culture and good breeding. As an example, Robbie came home the other day with an awful word, and when I asked him where he had got it, he said he had learned it from the McBreen boy on the back street.”
“Then,” said the rector, with an air of finality, “you should have seen the McBreen boy, and explained to him the naughtiness of the word, and requested him not to use it.”
“So I did, and he replied that he had learned it from his father, and if his father had a right to use it he had, and he’d like to see any stuck-up preacher’s wife stop him.”
The rector laughed a little, and rose from the table.