“Forget what?”
“What? How can you ask? That awful, horrid, uncouth, sloppy girl.” Again Mandy shuddered. “Those hands, big, coarse, red, ugly.”
“Yes,” cried Allan savagely, “the badge of slavery for a whole household of folk too ignorant to know the price that was being paid for the service rendered them.”
“And the hair,” continued Mandy relentlessly, “uncombed, filthy, horrid. And the dress, and—”
“Stop it!” cried Allan peremptorily.
“No, let me go on. The stupid face, the ignorant mind, the uncouth speech, the vulgar manners. Oh, I loathe the picture, and I wonder you can ever bear to look at her again. And, oh, I wish you could forget.”
“Forget!” The young man's lean, swarthy face seemed to light up with the deep glowing fires in his dark eyes. His voice grew vibrant. “Forget! Never while I live. Do you know what I remember?”
“Ah, spare me!” moaned his wife, putting her hands over his mouth.
“Do you know what I remember?” he repeated, pulling her hands away and holding them fast. “A girl with hands, face, hair, form, dress, manners damned to coarseness by a cruel environment? That? No! No! To-day as I look back I remember only two blue eyes, deep, deep as wells, soft, blue, and wonderfully kind. And I remember all through those days—and hard days they were to a green young fool fresh from the Old Country trying to keep pace with your farm-bred demon-worker Perkins—I remember all through those days a girl that never was too tired with her own unending toil to think of others, and especially to help out with many a kindness a home-sick, hand-sore, foot-sore stranger who hardly knew a buck-saw from a turnip hoe, and was equally strange to the uses of both, a girl that feared no shame nor harm in showing her kindness. That's what I remember. A girl that made life bearable to a young fool, too proud to recognize his own limitations, too blind to see the gifts the gods were flinging at him. Oh, what a fool I was with my silly pride of family, of superior education and breeding, and with no eye for the pure gold of as true and loyal a soul as ever offered itself in daily unmurmuring sacrifice for others, and without a thought of sacrifice. Fool and dolt! A self-sufficient prig! That's what I remember.”
The girl tore her hands away from him.