Ruth refused to withdraw "common." Carl recalled Abraham Lincoln and Golden-Rule Jones and Walt Whitman on the subject of the Common People, though as to what these sages had said he was vague. Ruth burst out:
"Oh, you can talk all you like about theories, but just the same, in real life most people are common as dirt. And just about as admissible to Society. It's all very fine to be good to servants, but you would be the first to complain if I invited the cook up here."
"Give her and her children education for three generations——"
She was perfectly unreasonable, and right in most of the things she said. He was perfectly unreasonable, and right in all of the things he said. Their argument was absurdly hot, and hurt them pathetically. It was difficult, at first, for Carl to admit that he was at odds with his playmate. Surely this was a sham dissension, of which they would soon tire, which they would smilingly give up. Then, he was trying not to be too contentious, but was irritated into retorting. After fifteen minutes they were staring at each other as at intruding strangers, he remembering the fact that she was a result of city life; she the fact that he wasn't a product of city life.
And a fact which neither of them realized, save subconsciously, was in the background: Carl himself had come in a few years from Oscar Ericson's back yard to Ruth Winslow's library—he had made the step naturally, as only an American could, but it was a step.
She was loftily polite. "I'm afraid you can't quite understand what the niceties of life mean to people like Phil. I'm sorry he won't give them up to the first truck-driver he meets, but I'm afraid he won't, and occasionally it's necessary to face facts! Niceties of the kind he has gr——"
"Nice!"
"Really——" Her heavy eyebrows arched in a frown.
"If you're going to get 'nice' on me, of course you'll have to be condescending, and that's one thing I won't permit."
"I'm afraid you'll find that one has to permit a great many things. Sometimes, apparently, I must permit great rudeness."