"Well, it is, and it isn't," she began.
"Better be honest, Mrs. Munger," said Putney. "You can't do anything for
a client who won't be honest with his attorney. That's what I have to
continually impress upon the reprobates who come to me. I say, 'It don't
matter what you've done; if you expect me to get you off, you've got to
make a clean breast of it.' They generally do; they see the sense of it."
They all laughed, and Mr. Gerrish said, "Mr. Putney is one of Hatboro's
privileged characters, Miss Kilburn."
"Thank you, Billy," returned the lawyer, with mock-tenderness. "Now, Mrs.
Munger, out with it!"
"You'll have to tell him sooner or later, Mrs. Munger!" said Mrs. Gerrish,
with overweening pleasure in her acquaintance with both of these superior
people. "He'll get it out of you anyway." Her husband looked at her, and
she fell silent.
Mrs. Munger swept her with a tolerant smile as she looked up at Putney.
"Why, it's really Miss Kilburn's affair," she began; and she laid the case
before the lawyer with a fulness that made Annie wince.
Putney took a piece of tobacco from his pocket, and tore off a morsel with
his teeth. "Excuse me, Annie! It's a beastly habit. But it's saved me from
something worse. _You_ don't know what I've been; but anybody in
Hatboro' can tell you. I made my shame so public that it's no use trying
to blink the past. You don't have to be a hypocrite in a place where
everybody's seen you in the gutter; that's the only advantage I've got over
my fellow-citizens, and of course I abuse it; that's nature, you know. When
I began to pull up I found that tobacco helped me; I smoked and chewed
both; now I only chew. Well," he said, dropping the pathetic simplicity
with which he had spoken, and turning with a fierce jocularity from the
shocked and pitying look in Annie's face to Mrs. Munger, "what do you
propose to do? Brother Peck's head seems to be pretty level, in the
abstract."
"Yes," said Mrs. Munger, willing to put the case impartially; "and I should
be perfectly willing to drop the invited dance and supper, if it was
thought best, though I must say I don't at all agree with Mr. Peck in
principle. I don't see what would become of society."
"You ought to be in politics, Mrs. Munger," said Putney. "Your readiness to
sacrifice principle to expediency shows what a reform will be wrought when
you ladies get the suffrage. What does Brother Gerrish think?"