"Yes, I know what you mean," burst forth Hope. "You mean that you think because I am selling flowers here in the station that I belong to poor people, who live anyhow,—poor, ignorant people, who are helped by the missions and the unions,—poor, ignorant people like those at the North End."
Dolly Dering stared with all her might at the flushed, excited face before her.
"Why—why—you are poor, aren't you, or you wouldn't be selling things like this?" she blunderingly asked.
Hope, in her turn, stared back at Dolly. Then in a vehement, exasperated tone, she said,—
"I didn't think anybody could be so ignorant as you are."
"I! ignorant! well!" exclaimed Dolly, in astonishment and rising resentment.
"Yes, ignorant," went on Hope, recklessly, "or you'd know more about the difference in people. You'd see the difference. You'd see that I didn't belong to the kind of poor folks who live any way and anyhow. My father is John Benham, an engineer on this road, and we have a nice home, and plenty to eat and drink and to wear,—and books and magazines and papers," she added, with a sudden instinct that these were the most convincing proofs of the comfort and respectability of her home.
"What do you sell flowers on the street for, then, if you are as nice as all that?" cried Dolly, now thoroughly aroused by Hope's words and manner.
"Because I wanted to buy something for myself that my father couldn't afford to buy. Don't you ever want anything that your father doesn't feel as if he could buy for you just when you wanted him to?"
"Well, if I did, I shouldn't be let to go out on the street and peddle flowers to earn the money," replied Dolly, with what she meant to be withering emphasis.