Mrs. Haydon's people were of the middling class of farmers. They
were not peasants, and they lived in a town of some pretension, but
it all seemed very poor and smelly to Mrs. Haydon's american born
daughters.
Mrs. Haydon liked it all. It was familiar, and then here she was so
wealthy and important. She listened and decided, and advised all of
her relations how to do things better. She arranged their present and
their future for them, and showed them how in the past they had been
wrong in all their methods.
Mrs. Haydon's only trouble was with her two daughters, whom she could
not make behave well to her parents. The two girls were very nasty to
all their numerous relations. Their mother could hardly make them kiss
their grandparents, and every day the girls would get a scolding. But
then Mrs. Haydon was so very busy that she did not have time to really
manage her stubborn daughters.
These hard working, earth-rough german cousins were to these american
born children, ugly and dirty, and as far below them as were italian
or negro workmen, and they could not see how their mother could ever
bear to touch them, and then all the women dressed so funny, and were
worked all rough and different.
The two girls stuck up their noses at them all, and always talked in
English to each other about how they hated all these people and how
they wished their mother would not do so.
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