human
I like Blair's mother best; but David's mother is prettier than Blair's mother.
gpt
It isn't polite to brag on mothers, said David, surveying his new trousers complacently,
human
It isn't right to say things like that out of the family,
gpt
This _is_ the family. You're going to marry David, and I'm going to marry Elizabeth. And I'm going to be awfully rich; and I'll give all you children a lot of money. Jimmy Sullivan--he's a friend of mine; I got acquainted with him yesterday, and he's the biggest puddler in our Works. Jimmie said, 'You're the only son,' he said, 'you'll get it all.' 'Course I told him I'd give him some,
human
You may kiss me, he said patiently;
gpt
Say, David, Nannie said, flinging his cap up to him,
human
Blair can stand on his head and count five. You can't.
gpt
I--I--I've had mumps, and I have two warts, and Blair hasn't. And I have a real dining-room at my house, and Blair hasn't!
human
You haven't got a real mother. You are only an adopted.
gpt
Well, what are you? David said, angrily;
human
I haven't got any kind of a mother,
gpt
Stop fighting, Blair commanded amiably;
human
David is right; we have a pigsty of a dining-room at our house. He paused to bend over and touch with an ecstatic finger a flake of lichen covering with its serpent green the damp, black bark in the crotch of the old tree.
gpt
Isn't that pretty?
human
You ought not to say things about our house, Nannie reproved him. As Blair used to say when he grew up,
gpt
Nannie was born proper.
human
Why not? said Blair.
gpt
They know everything is ugly at our house. They've got real dining-rooms at their houses; they don't have old desks round, the way we do.
human
Twenty years before, its gardens and meadows had stretched over to the river; but the estate had long ago come down in size and gone up in dollars. Now, there was scarcely an acre of sooty green left, and it was pressed upon by the yards of the Maitland Works, and almost islanded by railroad tracks. Grading had left the stately and dilapidated old house somewhat above the level of a street noisy with incessant teaming, and generally fetlock-deep in black mud. The house stood a little back from the badly paved sidewalk; its meager dooryard was inclosed by an iron fence--a row of black and rusted spears, spotted under their tines with innumerable gray cocoons. (Blair and David made constant and furtive attempts to lift these spears, socketed in crumbling lead in the granite base, for of course there could be nothing better for fighting Indians than a real iron spear.) The orchard behind the house had been cut in two by a spur track, which brought jolting gondola cars piled with red ore down to the furnace. The half dozen apple-trees that were left stretched gaunt arms over sour, grassless earth; they put out faint flakes of blossoms in the early spring, and then a fleeting show of greenness, which in a fortnight shriveled and blackened out of all semblance of foliage. But all the same the children found it a delightful place to play, although Blair sometimes said sullenly that it was
gpt
Blair hated ugly things, and, poor child! he was assailed by ugliness on every side. The queer, disorderly dining-room, in which for reasons of her own Mrs. Maitland transacted so much of her business that it had become for all practical purposes an office of her Works, was perhaps the
human
Why don't we have a real dining-room? he said once;
gpt
We'll eat in the kitchen, if I find it convenient,