“Let the coal-heavers take to their fists!” she scornfully cried. “People of our class can’t descend—”
“Well, but,” I interrupted, “then you give the coal-heavers the palm for discrimination.”
“How’s that?”
“Why, perfectly! Your coal-heaver kills for some offenses, while for lighter ones he—gets a bruise over the left eye.”
“You don’t meet it, you don’t meet it! What is an insult ever but an insult?”
“Oh, we in the North notice certain degrees—insolence, impudence, impertinence, liberties, rudeness—all different.”
She took up my phrase with a sudden odd quietness. “You in the North.”
“Why, yes. We have, alas! to expect and allow for rudeness sometimes, even in our chosen few, and for liberties in their chosen few; it’s only the hotel clerk and the head waiter from whom we usually get impudence; while insolence is the chronic condition of the Wall Street rich.”
“You in the North!” she repeated. “And so your Northern eyes can’t see it, after all!” At these words my intelligence sailed into a great blank, while she continued: “Frankly—and forgive me for saying it—I was hoping that you were one Northerner who would see it.”
“But see what?” I barked in my despair.