"There are secrets in every family, and we have
ours, but he'll never tell those old tales. All I can tell you is that
an ancestor of little Blanche went to wreck and ruin because of some
fine lady's doings, and killed himself. The story is that his boys
turned out bad. One of them saw his crime, and never got over the
shock; he was foolish like, after. The mother was a poor scared sort of
creature, and hadn't much influence over the other boy. There seemed to
be a blight on all the man's descendants, until one of them went to
America. Since then, they haven't prospered, exactly, but they've done
better, and they don't drink so heavy."
"They haven't done so well," remarked a worn patient-looking woman. Orth
typed her as belonging to the small middle-class of an interior town of
the eastern United States.
"You are not the child's mother?"
"Yes, sir. Everybody is surprised; you needn't apologize. She doesn't
look like any of us, although her brothers and sisters are good enough
for anybody to be proud of. But we all think she strayed in by mistake,
for she looks like any lady's child, and, of course, we're only
middle-class."
Orth gasped. It was the first time he had ever heard a native American
use the term middle-class with a personal application.
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