“I’d like to hear,” Addington said in the high, thin tone of his peevish disgust, “the evidence that justifies you in saying that. What have they ever done on this island to put them on an equality with us? Aren’t they our inferiors from every point of view, especially physically?”
“Certainly they are,” agreed Honey, not peevishly but as one who indorses, unnecessarily, a self-evident fact. “They’ve lived here on Angel Island as long as we have. But they haven’t made good yet, and we have. Why, just imagine them working on the New Camp—playing tennis, even.”
“But we prevented all that,” Frank protested. “We cut their wings. Handicapped as they were by their small feet, they could do nothing.”
“But,” Honey ejaculated, “if they’d been our physical equals, they would never have let us cut their wings.”
“But we caught them with a trick,” Frank said, “we put them in a position in which they could not use their physical strength.”
“Well, if they’d been our mental equals, they’d never let themselves get caught like that.”
“Well—but—but—but—” Frank sputtered. “Now you’re arguing crazily. You’re going round in a circle.”
“Oh, well,” Honey exclaimed impatiently, “let’s not argue any more. You always go round in a circle. I hate argument. It never changes, anybody. You never hear what the other fellow says. You always come out of it with your convictions strengthened.”
Frank made a gesture of despair. He drew a little book from his pocket and began to read.
“There’s one thing about them that certainly is to laugh,” Honey said after a silence, a glint of amusement in his big eyes, “and that is the care they take of those useless feet of theirs. Lulu’s even taken to doing hers up every night in oil or cream. It’s their particular vanity. Now, take that, for instance. Men never have those petty vanities. I mean real men—regular fellows.”