"Why, Harry!"

Her surprised look must have irritated him.

"Those damn Southerners!"

Sally Carrol's eyes flashed.

"Don't call 'em that."

"I'm sorry, dear," said Harry, malignantly apologetic, "but you
know what I think of them. They're sort of--sort of
degenerates--not at all like the old Southerners. They've lived
so long down there with all the colored people that they've
gotten lazy and shiftless."

"Hush your mouth, Harry!" she cried angrily. "They're not! They
may be lazy--anybody would be in that climate--but they're my
best friends, an' I don't want to hear 'em criticised in any such
sweepin' way. Some of 'em are the finest men in the world."

"Oh, I know. They're all right when they come North to college,
but of all the hangdog, ill-dressed, slovenly lot I ever saw, a
bunch of small-town Southerners are the worst!"

Sally Carrol was clinching her gloved hands and biting her lip
furiously.

"Why," continued Harry, if there was one in my class at New