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Is She A Lady?
by
“I wish I could think so.”
“Who, besides yourself, heard what I said?”
“Mr. Tudor.”
“Impossible!”
“He was sitting very near us when you so far forgot yourself as to notice, verbally, what was passing, and I am well satisfied, either heard distinctly what was said, or enough to enable him to understand the nature of all you said.”
“You are surely mistaken,” said I, feeling a good deal mortified, and perceiving much more clearly than I did before the nature of my offence against good manners and propriety of conduct.
“I wish I were. But I fear I am not. I know that Mr. Tudor looked around toward you suddenly, and I noticed that he was much more particular afterward in his attentions to the rest of the company. At table, you may have yourself remarked this.”
“Yes, I noticed it.”
“And yet, even at the table, when he was doing his best, you again hurt his feelings.”
“Me!”
“Yes, you. When Mrs. Tudor spoke harshly to Lucy, or did something or other that you thought out of the way, you must look your sarcasm at me, notwithstanding the eyes of her husband were upon you.”
“But he didn’t see me, then.”
“Yes, but he did. I saw him looking directly at you.”
“Oh, no! it cannot be.” I was unwilling to believe this.
“I wish it were not so for my husband’s sake,” returned Mrs. Sunderland. “But the evidence of my senses I generally find it necessary to credit.”
I must own that I felt considerably cut up, or cut down, whichever is the most mortifying state to be in. To look and whisper my censure in company, I had thought no great harm; but now that I had found I had been discovered in the act, I had a mortifying sense of its impropriety.
“Well, anyhow,” said I, rallying myself, and speaking with some lightness of tone, “it is clear that Mrs. Tudor is no lady, for all you thought her such a pattern-card of gentility.”
“And I have not the least doubt,” retorted my wife, “that it is equally clear to Mr. Tudor that you are no gentleman. So, on that score, the account stands fairly balanced between the two families.”
This was a pretty hard hit; and I felt a little “riled up,” as the Yankees say, but I concluded that the uttering of a few sharp sayings to my wife, under the circumstances, would not prove my claim to being a gentleman, especially against the facts of the case; so I cooled down, and walked home rather silently, and in not the best humour with myself.
On the next morning, I took up a little book from my wife’s bureau, and sat down to look over it while waiting for the breakfast bell. It was a book of aphorisms, and I opened at once to a page where a leaf was turned down. A slight dot with a pencil directed my eyes to a particular line, which read–
“He who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones.”
I am not sure that Mrs. Sunderland turned down that leaf in the book, and marked the sentiment for my especial benefit; though I strongly suspected her. At any rate, I deemed it best not to ask the question.