"Say," said Mr. Thomas when they had gone, "that little girl 's a peach,
you bet; a little green, I guess, but she 'll ripen in the sun."




VIII

AN EVENING OUT


Fannie Hamilton, tired as she was, sat long into the night with her
little family discussing New York,--its advantages and disadvantages,
its beauty and its ugliness, its morality and immorality. She had
somewhat receded from her first position, that it was better being here
in the great strange city than being at home where the very streets
shamed them. She had not liked the way that their fellow lodger looked
at Kitty. It was bold, to say the least. She was not pleased, either,
with their new acquaintance's familiarity. And yet, he had said no more
than some stranger, if there could be such a stranger, would have said
down home. There was a difference, however, which she recognised. Thomas
was not the provincial who puts every one on a par with himself, nor was
he the metropolitan who complacently patronises the whole world. He was
trained out of the one and not up to the other. The intermediate only
succeeded in being offensive. Mrs. Jones' assurance as to her guest's
fine qualities did not do all that might have been expected to reassure
Mrs. Hamilton in the face of the difficulties of the gentleman's manner.

She could not, however, lay her finger on any particular point that