"A little!" exclaimed Addie. "He served in a two-year campaign, fought in nine pitched battles, and was wounded several times, very severely indeed at Vicksburg!"
"Ah, indeed!" says Robert patronizingly. "Strange he never mentioned the fact to me until the other day, when I was quite astonished at the—ah—technical knowledge he seemed to have of military affairs, and then he casually mentioned his early experience."
"He served in the ranks, Robert—what you would do if you had any real sense of manliness and honor," remarks Addie quickly.
"What do you mean, Adelaide? How dare you address such words to me?"
"I mean what I say. I mean that lots of gentlemen's sons nowadays, who have no means of getting commissions, enlist in the ranks and work their way bravely up the tree, as you ought to do."
"You mean me—me—Robert Lefroy—to enlist as a common soldier—me to herd for years with the most degraded class of society in the kingdom! I think you are losing your senses, Adelaide," he says contemptuously.
"No, I am not, Robert; and I maintain it would be infinitely less degrading to do so than to go on sponging for years on the almost unparalleled generosity of a man with whom you are connected by no ties of kindred, and to whom we already owe a weight of obligation we can never hope to repay. Why should it be derogatory to you, if your heart is really set on soldiering, to begin in the ranks and work your way manfully, bravely up to a commission, as my husband did?"
"You cannot compare me and my estate in life," he retorts angrily, "with that of your husband, a man who never owned a grandfather, who had no prestige to support, no family to consider. It is simply senseless comparing me to him."
"It is, it is!" she answers, with kindling eyes. "My husband did not own a grandfather; but he owns an upright, proud, self respecting spirit, and he would rather, yes—I know it—a hundred times starve in the streets from which he sprung than live on another man's alms as you do, Robert Lefroy!"
"Stow that, Addie, stow that!" he cries, roughly advancing to her, glaring with anger. "I have taken a good deal from you; but I'll not stand any more. For the future, mind your own affairs and let me mind mine, and never again presume to address me on this subject. If I liked, I could retort on you, and tell you to do your duty as a wife more effectively than you do, to make your husband's life happier, instead of preaching to others; but—but, degraded and unmanly as I am, I make it a rule never to strike a woman, no matter how much she deserves it; and I'll leave you now with the warning, which I'll take measures to make you respect, that I am doing duty in this house by your husband's orders."