“Good-night, Richard,” said Mrs. Paul, rising with great dignity.
“Oh, hold on! Don’t get mad. Hold your base. I apologize; only, it seems pretty hard to be down on a girl”—
“You know I’m not down on her; I like her very much; I respect her very much.”
“Well, then, what’s the matter?” demanded Dick boldly.
“I don’t know. Only I have a vague recollection that when she came to teach the children she mentioned, in a casual sort of way, something about—about her home, or her father and mother, or something. I can’t really remember, but I know I gained the impression that she was”—
“Poor?” Dick burst in. “Of course she’s poor. She has never made any secret of that. Why should she? Only a cad would do that.”
“I don’t mean poor,” Mrs. Paul said, frowning. “I wish you would have some manners, Dick, and not interrupt. I merely mean that a young man has no right to pay attention to a girl in another class unless he means to follow it up. I despise a trifler, Dick.”
“You don’t despise him any more than I do,” Dick returned loftily. “But there isn’t any question of class here. We don’t have any higher class than hers; and as for ‘following it up,’ as you say—if a fellow thought there was any chance for him with that woman he’d follow it up quick enough, and ask her to marry him! Yes, and he ought to do it as formally as though she were a princess. She is a princess! He ought to go and ask her father if he might ask her. Her poverty, which seems to trouble you so much, Cousin Kate, has no bearing on the situation.”
Poor Dick was smarting with Annie’s apparent coldness and his cousin’s snobbishness—so he called it; but there was really no excuse for bursting out at Mrs. Paul in this way; and it was no wonder that she said good-night with some asperity, and went upstairs and told her husband that Dick was a perfect goose, besides being rather a cub.
“He’s twenty-four and old enough to know better,” she said. “Oh, dear, I do wish his father was here!”