``No doubt,'' thought Jane,
with the familiar, though indignantly denied, complacence of her
class, ``as soon as she gets in here she'll want to hang on. She
played it very well, but she must have been crazy with delight at
my noticing her and offering to take her up.''
The postman came as Jane was finishing breakfast. He brought a
note from Selma--a hasty pencil scrawl on a sheet of printer's
copy paper:
``Dear Miss Hastings: For the present I'm too busy to take my
walks. So, I'll not be there to-morrow. With best regards, S.
G.'
Such a fury rose up in Jane that the undigested breakfast went
wrong and put her in condition to give such exhibition as chance
might tempt of that ugliness of disposition which appears from
time to time in all of us not of the meek and worm-like class,
and which we usually attribute to any cause under the sun but the
vulgar right one. ``The impertinence!'' muttered Jane, with a
second glance at the note which conveyed; among other humiliating
things, an impression of her own absolute lack of importance to
Selma Gordon. ``Serves me right for lowering myself to such
people. If I wanted to try to do anything for the working class
I'd have to keep away from them. They're so unattractive to look
at and to associate with--not like those shrewd, respectful,
interesting peasants one finds on the other side. They're better
in the East. They know their place in a way.
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