Carmella Commands
Damn these languages anyway! Why don’t they all talk Italian? Good-bye, Mrs. Barrington.”
“But, Kate, just a minute!”
Mrs. Barrington was definitely annoyed at the interruption, just as the key to the problem was being given her. In her own well-ordered home interruptions did not happen. She felt like discharging Miss Sargle on the spot, with two weeks’ pay and no reference.
“What do you mean about my being high hat with your mother?” she went on quickly.
Carmella turned in the doorway, emerging from the middle of Miss Sargle, into whom she had plunged in the process of hasty departure. Miss Sargle had lingered fascinated. She was far less bewildered by the collision than by discovering a Carmella who talked freely and scandalously with Mrs. Barrington. With herself, Carmella had invariably been reserved and most exemplary. Here, she sensed, was another step in her postgraduate education.
Poised on one foot, Carmella turned to Mrs. Barrington and half shouted:
“You know what high hat is, don’t you? You think you’re better than us folks. Better than m’ mother. You talk down to ’em. You smile down to ’em. My mother ain’t going to make lace for you to smile down to her about. It’s better lace than you could make yourself. A whole heap better. Get me?”
“But, Kate⸺” pleaded Mrs. Barrington, now in real distress. She knew that never again could she
[24]
