"Conditions are different there," said he with an enforced quiet. "Our pavement is different."
"Our children are not so different, are they?" she demanded. "Our mothers are made of the same stuff I suppose?"
"You speak at if I wanted to kill them! As if I liked to!"
"I thought at first it would hurt you as it did me," she said warmly. "I turned to you with real hope when we met in Liverpool. I was glad to think I knew you, and I had not been glad of that for long! I thought you would care, would do things."
Do what he would, his mouth set hard in its accustomed lines. "Those English fender are not practicable in this country, Mary. They have been tried."
"When? Where? By whom?" she threw at him. "I have read about it, and heard about it. I know there was an effort to get them adopted, and that they were refused. They cost more than this kind!" and she pointed disdainfully at the rattling bit of stub-toed slat-work in front of a passing car.
"Do you expect me to make a revolution in the street car system of America—to please you? Do you make it a condition? Perhaps I can accomplish it. Is it a bargain? Come—"
"No," she said slowly. "I'm not making bargains. I'm only wishing, as I have wished so often in years past—that you were a different kind of man—"
"What kind do you want me to be?"
"I want you to be—I wish you were—a man who cared to give perfect service to his country, in his business."