‘This is too bad,’ he said, indignantly, taking the pipe from his mouth. ‘There is only one grain of truth in your tirade against the class in which you were born—its members are guilty of aping the faults of a higher class. As you have yourself said so, you cannot be ignorant that greed, and its opposite—senseless extravagance, laziness, levity, and worse, are safe to be found—just masked by a thin veneer of polish—in still greater abundance among dukes and duchesses—or say at once kings and queens, than among tradespeople. And you have said nothing of the peculiar virtues of tradespeople. You spoke of Mrs. Polley’s self-assertion. I grant it is offensive—but surely you have been told what that woman has done for her family. When her husband proved an incapable ne’er-do-well, who if left to himself would have gone straight to the dogs, and reduced his children to the workhouse, did not his “missus” come to the front and stand by her master like a brick and a Trojan? She kept him from both his and her undoing. She maintained Polley’s grocery business by her industry, and made it flourish by her mother-wit, till now her husband is no worse than a tolerably respectable nonentity, and her children have been reared in independence and comfort. No blame will rest on her if they are not able to hold their own in the world. I have often heard, and so have you, my father and old Floyd praise that woman for her works. As for Mrs. Dadd, I don’t say that her meekness is the real thing, but she is not without true motherliness and kindness of heart. Have you forgotten how she left her own child and came out and stayed here to nurse you through scarlatina because she doubted Sally Pope’s experience and ability to cope with the disease? For shame! Fan, a short memory is unpardonable here.’ ‘I have not forgotten,’ said Fan, pettishly; ‘if I had, I should not have kept up the amount of intercourse with the Dadds I have consented to keep.’