He was as brave as a fireman, everybody said so, didn't they, Miss Polly ?" "Men of that sort always have courage," observed Gabriella contemptuously, and despised herself for the remark.

What was the matter with her this afternoon?
Why did this man arouse in her the instinct of combativeness, the fever of opposition?
Was it all because she suspected him of a vulgar intrigue with a shopgirl?
And why had she decided so positively that Alice was vulgar?
Certainly, she, a dressmaker, should be the last to condemn shopgirls as vulgar.
"I declare, I can't begin to make you out, Gabriella," said Miss Polly uneasily.

"I never heard you talk about folks bein' common before.

It don't sound like you." "Well, he is common, you know," protested Gabriella, with a strange, almost tearful violence.

"Why did he have to shake hands with us all--with each one of us, even Fanny, when he went away?
We'd hardly spoken to him." "I don't know what's come over you," observed the seamstress gloomily.
"I reckon I'm common, too, so I don't notice it.