“What of it?” he said. “Why this: equality is not conceded here, after all, and the Americans are no better off than the English. In fact there’s no difference.”
“Now what an idea. There’s nothing in a title except what is put into it—you’ve said that yourself. Suppose the title is clean, instead of lady. You get that?”
“I believe so. Instead of speaking of a woman as a lady, you substitute clean and say she’s a clean person.”
“That’s it. In England the swell folks don’t speak of the working people as gentlemen and ladies?”
“Oh, no.”
“And the working people don’t call themselves gentlemen and ladies?”
“Certainly not.”
“So if you used the other word there wouldn’t be any change. The swell people wouldn’t call anybody but themselves ‘clean,’ and those others would drop sort of meekly into their way of talking and they wouldn’t call themselves clean. We don’t do that way here. Everybody calls himself a lady or gentleman, and thinks he is, and don’t care what anybody else thinks him, so long as he don’t say it out loud. You think there’s no difference. You knuckle down and we don’t. Ain’t that a difference?”
“It is a difference I hadn’t thought of; I admit that. Still—calling one’s self a lady doesn’t—er—”
“I wouldn’t go on if I were you.”