"Well, then, that proves that you are from the Dutch gentry,—an old Knickerbocker family!" exclaimed Anna, in a tone of satisfaction, that brought forth a perfect shout of laughter from Kate, and after the laughter the immediate answer, "Oh, yes; and the New York head of this old Knickerbocker family of mine kept a shop down near the wharves, where he bought and sold flour and molasses, just as that dear old Joris Van Heemskirk did in Mrs. Barr's dear, delightful story, 'The Bow of Orange Ribbon.' In trade, you see,—shopkeepers!" and Kate nodded her head and laughed again, as she looked at Anna, who had a silly way sometimes of talking as she had heard some English people talk of "people in trade."
But Anna, who did not like to be laughed at, any more than the rest of us, retorted here: "It will do for you to go on in this way about family, and ancestors, and all that. You can afford to tell the truth because you do belong and have belonged, or your family has belonged, for years to the upper class; but if you had only just come up from—from—"
"Selling flour and molasses," struck in Kate, mischievously.
"No, I did not mean that, for I suppose things were different then; but if you belonged to new rich people,—people who had just made money, people who had been common working-people, mechanics, or something of that sort,—you wouldn't talk like this, you'd keep still."
"Yes, if I belonged to common working-people, people whose minds were common and vulgar; but how if I belonged to working-people like George Stephenson, the father of English railways, and the locomotive? Oh, Anna, don't you remember we had to study up about Watt and Boulton and the Stephensons last term in connection with our applied-science lessons?"
"Last term!" cried Anna; "you can't expect me to remember everything I studied up on, last term. Things like that don't stick in my mind as they do in yours."
"Well, you ought to remember about George Stephenson, who was the son of a fireman of a colliery engine in England, and how he worked up, and educated himself, and finally constructed the steam locomotive that made him famous, and led to his being employed in the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. And there was his son Robert, who followed in his father's footsteps and became an authority on everything connected with railways and engines; and then there was James Watt, who preceded them as the inventor of the condensing steam-engine for manufacturing purposes, which led the way to Stephenson's locomotive. Watt was only a poor boy, the son of a small trader in Scotland, and was an apprentice to a philosophical-instrument maker, where he worked so hard and lived so poorly that he nearly lost his health. Do you think that men like these wouldn't dare to talk about their humble beginnings? Do you think they would keep still, or do you think their families would keep still, because they were ashamed of the humble beginnings? No, no, not unless they were miserable cowards and didn't know what to be proud of, and that indeed would make them dirt common and vulgar, and not deserving their good fortune."
"Well, I wasn't thinking of geniuses, of course. I don't suppose that anybody who was connected with such people as you speak of would be ashamed exactly of the 'humble beginnings,' as you call them,—the people I mean are the ordinary people, who have just come up from nowhere, with a lot of money made out of—"
"Flour and molasses; yes, I see—you think the molasses sticks to them, and they pretend to ignore it. Well, all I've got to say is that I do so hate cowardice, I think, if I were in their places, with the molasses so new and sticky, that I should blurt out, 'Molasses! molasses!' if anybody so much as looked at me attentively. But goodness, girls, do you know what time it is?"
"Half-past eight," guessed Myra and Anna, confidently.