her in their own cottage and had asked him more than once why he did
not come up to the big house to see her, and his reply had invariably
been:

"Honey, I don't belong there. No, 'tain't no use to argue,--I don't.
Your mother would have; she come of quality stock, and what in the
Lord's name she ever saw in me I've been, a-guessin' an' a-guessin' for
the last eighteen year."

"But Dad, Peggy Stewart has never, never made either you or me feel the
least shade of difference in our stations. Neither has Polly Howland.
They couldn't be lovelier to me, though I know you have never been at
Severndale as guests have been there. But it has never seemed to strike
me until now. And down at the school the girls are awfully nice to me;
at least, most of them are. Those who are patronizing are that way
because they are so to everybody. But the really nice girls are lovely,
and I am sure they'd never think of being rude to you."

"Little girl, listen to your old Dad: There are some things in this
world not to be got around. I'm one of 'em. Peggy Stewart and Polly
Howland are thoroughbreds an' thoroughbreds ain't capable of no low-down
snobbishness. They know their places in the world and there's nothing
open to discussion. An' they're too fine-grained to scratch other folks
the wrong way. But, some of them girls up yonder are cross-breeds--oh,
yes, I've been a-watchin' 'em an' I know,--tain't no use to argue. They
kin prance an' cavort an' their coats are sleek an' shinin', but don't
count on 'em too much when it comes right down to disposition an'
endurance, 'cause they'll disappoint you. I ain't never told you honey,
that your mother was a Bladen. Well, she was. Some day I'm going to tell
you how she fell in love with a good-lookin' young skalawag by the name
o' Jim Bolivar. He comes o' pretty decent stock too, only he hadn't
sense enough to stay at St. John's where his dad put him, but had to go
rampagin' all over the country till he'd clean forgot any bringin'-up
he'd ever had, and landed up as a sort o' bailiff, as they call 'em over
in the old country, on an estate down on the eastern shore. Then he met
Helen Bladen and 's sure's you live she 'changed the name and not the
letter and changed for a heap sight worse 'n the better' when she eloped
with me. Thank the Lord she didn't live long enough to see the worst,
and you hardly remember her at all. But that's my pretty history,--a
no-count, ne'er do well, and if it weren't fo