I recalled what my friend the banker said about throwing away cant, and I asked myself if I were in the presence of some such free spirit again. I did not see how young Camp could afford it; but then I reflected that he had really nothing to lose by it, for he did not expect to make anything out of us; Mrs. Makely would probably not give up his sister as seamstress if the girl continued to work so well and so cheaply as she said.
“Suppose,” he went on, “that some old native took you at your word, and came to call upon you at the hotel, with his wife, just as one of the city cottagers would do if he wanted to make your acquaintance?”
“I should be perfectly delighted,” said Mrs. Makely, “and I should receive them with the greatest possible cordiality.”
“The same kind of cordiality that you would show to the cottagers?”
“I suppose that I should feel that I had more in common with the cottagers. We should be interested in the same things, and we should probably know the same people and have more to talk about—”
“You would both belong to the same class, and that tells the whole story. If you were out West, and the owner of one of those big twenty-thousand-acre farms called on you with his wife, would you act toward them as you would toward our natives? You wouldn’t. You would all be rich people together, and you would understand one another because you had money.”
“Now, that is not so,” Mrs. Makely interrupted. “There are plenty of rich people one wouldn’t wish to know at all, and who really can’t get into society—who are ignorant and vulgar. And then, when you come to money, I don’t see but what country people are as glad to get it as anybody.”
“Oh, gladder,” said the young man.
“Well?” demanded Mrs. Makely, as if this were a final stroke of logic. The young man did not reply, and Mrs. Makely continued: “Now I will appeal to your sister to say whether she has ever seen any difference in my manner toward her from what I show to all the young ladies in the hotel.” The young girl flushed and seemed reluctant to answer. “Why, Lizzie!” cried Mrs. Makely, and her tone showed that she was really hurt.
The scene appeared to me rather cruel, and I glanced at Mrs. Camp with an expectation that she would say something to relieve it. But she did not. Her large, benevolent face expressed only a quiet interest in the discussion.