"I don't know what more of a lady you could be than we all are—Why, Mabel Cawber always says that we are the most refined family of the whole lot at Bindon's Green—and Mabel ought to know surely!"

"Because her father was a solicitor, and she has never done a stroke of work in her life?" Katherine smiled again—it made Matilda feel uncomfortable.

"Mabel is a perfect lady," she affirmed indignantly.

"I will be able to tell you about that in a year's time, I expect," Katherine said, reflectively. "At present, I am not experienced enough to say, but I strongly feel that she is not. You see, Tild, you get your ideas of things from the trash you read—and from the ridiculous nonsense Fred and Albert talk after they come home from those meetings at the National Brotherhood Club—fool's stuff about the equality of all men——"

"Of course we are all equal!" broke in Matilda, still ruffled.

Katherine Bush smiled again. "Well, I wish you could see the difference between Fred and Bert and those gentlemen I see through the glass screen! They have all got eyes and noses and legs and arms in common, but everything else is different, and if you knew anything about evolution, you'd understand why."

[Pg 29]

[Pg 29]

"Should I!" indignantly.

"Yes. It is the something inside the head, something in the ideas, produced by hundreds of years of different environment and a wider point of view—and it is immensely in the little customs and manners of speech and action. If you had ever seen and spoken to a real gentleman, Tild, you would grasp it."

Matilda was quite unmollified and on the defensive.

"You can't have two more honourable, straightforward young fellows than our brothers in no family in England, and I expect lots of your gents borrowing money are as crooked as can be!"

Katherine became contemplative.

"Probably—the thing I mean does not lie in moral qualities—I suppose it ought to—but it doesn't—We had a real sharp last week, and to look at and to hear him talk he was a perfect gentleman, with refined and easy manners; he would never have done anything in bad taste like Fred and Bert 

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