"Oh, you were pretty stand-offish before you knew that," he answered coolly.
Vanity smarting from deeper hurts made her answer, haughtily: "I'm rather inexperienced, you know, in meeting people of that class."
In his heart too there were deeper disappointments than this touched. "Well, I must say—" he began hotly, "I think if I felt as snobbish as that I'd try pretty hard to conceal it!"
Amy was carefully putting away her hat; she had an appearance of cold composure, of a sense of superiority. It was because she wanted to keep that that she did not speak. The things within would so completely have destroyed it.
"I guess you don't understand, Amy," said Deane, quieted by her silence; "if you knew all about Annie Morris I think you'd see she is a woman worth meeting." Thinking of his talk with Edith and her mother that morning, he added, a good deal of feeling breaking into his voice: "A good sight more so than some of the people you are meeting!"
"And of course," she could not hold back, "they—those inferior people—won't go to see Ruth Holland, and this wonderful woman will! That's the secret of it, isn't it?"
"It's one thing that shows her superiority," he replied coolly. "Another thing is her pluck—grit. Her husband is a dolt, and she's determined her three children shall have some sort of a show in life, so she's driven ahead—worked from daylight till dark many a time—to make decent things possible for them."
"Well, that's very commendable, I'm sure," replied Amy mildly, appearing to be chiefly concerned with a loose button on the wrap she had just taken off.
"And with all that she's kept her own spirit alive; she's not going to let life get clear ahead of her, either. She's pretty valiant, I think." He was thinking again of Edith and her mother as he added contentiously, "I don't know any woman in this town I'd rather talk to!"
Amy, appearing quite outside the things that were disturbing him, only smiled politely and threaded a needle for sewing on the button. He stood there in the doorway, fidgeting, his face red. She seemed so uncaring; she seemed so far away. "Oh, Amy!" he cried, miserably, appealingly.