He would show
something of his real self then, I think. Make a nobleman a
shopkeeper, for instance, and see what kind of a shopkeeper he
made. If he showed himself just as honorable when a shopkeeper as
he had seemed when a nobleman, there would be good reason for
counting him an honorable man."
"What odd fancies you have, Mary!" said Hesper, yawning.
"I know my father would have been as honorable as a nobleman as
he was when a shopkeeper," persisted Mary.
"That I can well believe--he was your father," said Hesper,
kindly, meaning what she said, too, so far as her poor
understanding of the honorable reached.
"Would you mind telling me," asked Mary, "how you would define
the difference between a nobleman and a shopkeeper?"
Hesper thought a little. The question to her was a stupid one.
She had never had interest enough in humanity to care a straw
what any shopkeeper ever thought or felt. Such people inhabited a
region so far below her as to be practically out of her sight.
They were not of her kind. It had never occurred to her that life
must look to them much as it looked to her; that, like Shylock,
they had feelings, and would bleed if cut with a knife. But,
although she was not interested, she peered about sleepily for an
answer. Her thoughts, in a lazy fashion, tumbled in her, like
waves without wind--which, indeed, was all the sort of thinking
she knew.
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