“Certainly they are.  All the respectable ones.”

“Well, that puts a better face on it.  Certainly there is no harm in a title when it is given to everybody.  It is only an offense and a wrong when it is restricted to a favored few.  But Miss—­er—­”

“Hattie.”

“Miss Hattie, be frank; confess that that title isn’t accorded by everybody to everybody.  The rich American doesn’t call her cook a lady—­ isn’t that so?”

“Yes, it’s so.  What of it?”

He was surprised and a little disappointed, to see that his admirable shot had produced no perceptible effect.

“What of it?” he said.  “Why this:  equality is not conceded here, after all, and the Americans are no better off than the English.  In fact there’s no difference.”

“Now what an idea.  There’s nothing in a title except what is put into it—­you’ve said that yourself.  Suppose the title is ‘clean,’ instead of ‘lady.’  You get that?”

“I believe so.  Instead of speaking of a woman as a lady, you substitute clean and say she’s a clean person.”

“That’s it.  In England the swell folks don’t speak of the working people as gentlemen and ladies?”

“Oh, no.”

“And the working people don’t call themselves gentlemen and ladies?”

“Certainly not.”

“So if you used the other word there wouldn’t be any change.  The swell people wouldn’t call anybody but themselves ‘clean,’ and those others would drop sort of meekly into their way of talking and they wouldn’t call themselves clean.  We don’t do that way here.  Everybody calls himself a lady or gentleman, and thinks he is, and don’t care what anybody else thinks him, so long as he don’t say it out loud.  You think there’s no difference.  You knuckle down and we don’t.  Ain’t that a difference?”

“It is a difference I hadn’t thought of; I admit that.  Still—­calling one’s self a lady doesn’t—­er—­”

“I wouldn’t go on if I were you.”

Howard Tracy turned his head to see who it might be that had introduced this remark.  It was a short man about forty years old, with sandy hair, no beard, and a pleasant face badly freckled but alive and intelligent, and he wore slop-shop clothing which was neat but showed wear.  He had come from the front room beyond the hall, where he had left his hat, and he had a chipped and cracked white wash-bowl in his hand.  The girl came and took the bowl.

“I’ll get it for you.  You go right ahead and give it to him, Mr. Barrow.  He’s the new boarder—­Mr. Tracy—­and I’d just got to where it was getting too deep for me.”