“We’ll find pleasanter people, at all events.”
“Why, what have you got against them?”
“What have they got against us? I don’t mean the natives here. They’re well enough, in their way. I speak of their summer visitors, like ourselves. You ask what they’ve got against us. A strange question!”
“I haven’t noticed anything.”
“But I have. Because our fathers were retail storekeepers, these J.’s and L.’s and B.’s affect to look down upon us! You know they do.”
Miss Inskip could not deny that something of this had been observed by her. But she was one of those contented spirits who set but little store upon aristocratic acquaintances, and are therefore insensible to its slights.
With the proud Julia it was different. If not absolutely slighting, the “society” encountered in this fashionable watering-place had in some way spited her—that section of it described as the J.’s and the L.’s and the B.’s.
“And for what reason?” she continued, with increasing indignation. “If our fathers were retail storekeepers, their grandfathers were the same. Where’s the difference, I should like to know?”
Miss Inskip could see none, and said so.
But this did not tranquillise the chafed spirit of her cousin, and perceiving it, she tried to soothe her on another tack.