“I am scarcely old enough, I fear,” he sighed.
“Then be a bootblack, or a chimney sweep, or a robber, or--or--_any_thing!”
“Oh, Rebecca!” wailed Doris, greatly shocked. “How sadly the lightness of your mind is reflected in your words!”
“By cracky, you’ve got _me_ going,” returned Becky, despondently. “What does it, Doris; religion, or Boston kindergartens?”
“You have not yet told us what ‘chin music’ means,” suggested Allerton, with much interest. “It is a new term to us.”
“You must pardon our ignorance,” Doris observed, in her most proper manner. “Our vocabulary, you know, is limited to authorized words; yet with you the English language seems to have been amplified, and the grammatical construction of many sentences altered. Is it an idiom peculiar to this section of the country, or have you authority for the use of such unusual expressions?”
Somehow, Becky felt distinctly abashed. She might laugh at the proper speech of Doris Randolph and regard it in the light of a good joke; but, after all, she experienced a humiliating sense of her own crudeness and lack of refinement whenever the new neighbors engaged her in conversation.
Of course she resented this feeling, which intruded itself, unasked. The Darings were as good as the Randolphs, any day, she mentally declared, knowing all the time the thought was an admission of inferiority. Becky had had careful training once upon a time, and her dead mother’s injunction never to forget her personal dignity, nor give to others an opportunity to disparage it, was not wholly forgotten by the girl. She well knew that she had cultivated the slang of the streets and their rabble because some of her village associates considered it amusing and had encouraged her by their laughter. So, although the reproaches of the carefully trained Randolph children were only implied, through their complete ignorance of such phrases, the girl felt them nevertheless, and this made her bitter and more reckless than ever.
Fortunately, Phœbe called to her just then and with a shout of “So long, bully Bostoners!” she ran in to attend the gathering in Cousin Judith’s room.
Now it chanced that Miss Eliot had overheard, through her open window, the conversation exchanged across the street by Becky and her neighbors, and her sweet face flushed painfully while she listened. That a daughter of gentle, refined Molly Eliot should exhibit coarseness and vulgarity amazed and annoyed her. More than once during the brief day since her arrival she had winced at the rude sallies of Becky and Don, and even little Sue had sometimes offended her sensitive ears.