To which Pemberton always replied:
"Amusing--the great Moreen troupe? Why they're altogether delightful;
and if it weren't for the hitch that you and I (feeble performers!) make
in the ensemble they'd carry everything before them."
What the boy couldn't get over was the fact that this particular blight
seemed, in a tradition of self-respect, so undeserved and so arbitrary.
No doubt people had a right to take the line they liked; but why should
his people have liked the line of pushing and toadying and lying and
cheating? What had their forefathers--all decent folk, so far as he
knew--done to them, or what had he done to them? Who had poisoned their
blood with the fifth-rate social ideal, the fixed idea of making smart
acquaintances and getting into the monde chic, especially when it was
foredoomed to failure and exposure? They showed so what they were after;
that was what made the people they wanted not want _them_. And never a
wince for dignity, never a throb of shame at looking each other in the
face, never any independence or resentment or disgust.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68