No doubt this was a moral thrown away with such an auditor; but I was provoked; and when a man is provoked, he is not always wise. The answer showed the effect it had produced.
"I don't pretend to know how that is; but if it isn't pride, what is it that makes Dus Malbone so different from my da'ters? She'd no more think of being like one on 'em, scouring about the lots, riding bare-backed, and scampering through the neighborhood, than you'd think of cooking my dinner—that she wouldn't."
Poor Mrs. Tinkum—or, as she would have been apt to call herself, Miss Tinkum! She had betrayed one of the commonest weaknesses of human nature, in thus imputing pride to the Chainbearer's niece because the latter behaved differently from her and hers. How many persons in this good republic of ours judge their neighbors on precisely the same principle; inferring something unsuitable, because it seems to reflect on their own behavior! But by this time, I had got to hear the name of Dus with some interest, and I felt disposed to push the subject further.
"Miss Malbone, then," I said, "does not ride bare-back?"
"La! major, what in natur' puts it into your head to call the gal Miss Malbone! There's no Miss Malbone living sin' her own mother died."
"Well, Dus Malbone, I mean; she is above riding bare-backed?"
"That she is; even a pillion would be hardly grand enough for her, allowing her own brother to use the saddle."
"Her own brother! This young surveyor, then, is Dus's brother?"
"Sort o', and sort o' not, like. They had the same father, but different mothers."
"That explains it; I never heard the Chainbearer speak of any nephew, and it seems the young man is not related to him at all—he is the half-brother of his niece."