Aristocrat's condescending patience with the Plebeian.

It was no more than right that the Aristocrat should recover her
self-possession first. "Never mind about your understanding. Zillah
dear," she said softly. "Your hair is the most beautiful thing I ever
saw in my life!"

Along Zillah Forsyth's ivory cheek an incongruous little flush of red
began to show. With much more nonchalance than was really necessary she
pointed towards her half-packed trunk.

"It wasn't--Sunday school--I was coming home from--when I got my motto!"
she remarked dryly, with a wink at no one in particular. "And, so far as
I know," she proceeded with increasing sarcasm, "the man who inspired my
noble life was not in any way--particularly addicted to the use of
alcoholic beverages!" As though her collar was suddenly too tight she
rammed her finger down between her stiff white neck-band and her soft
white throat. "He was a--New York doctor!" she hastened somewhat airily
to explain. "Gee! But he was a swell! And he was spending his summer
holiday up in the same Maine town where I was tending soda fountain.
And he used to drop into the drug-store, nights, after cigars and
things. And he used to tell me stories about the drugs and things,
sitting up there on the counter swinging his legs and pointing out this
and that,--quinine, ipecac, opium, hasheesh,--all the silly patent
medicines, every sloppy soothing syrup! Lordy! He knew 'em as though
they were people! Where they come from! Where they're going to! Yarns
about the tropics that would kink the hair along the nape of your neck!
Jokes about your own town's soup-kettle pharmacology that would make you
yell for joy! Gee! But the things that man had seen and known! Gee! But
the things that man could make you see and know! And he had an