Read "Young People's Pride" by Stephen Vincent Benet online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"More beans, Oliver," says Mrs. Ellicott in a voice like thin syrup, her "generous" voice. The generous voice is used whenever Mrs. Ellicott wants to show herself a person of incredibly scrupulous fairness before that bodiless assemblage of old women in black that constitute the They who Say -- and so it is used to Oliver nearly all the time.
"No thank you, Mrs. Ellicott. " Oliver manages to look at her politely enough as he speaks but then his eyes go straight back to Nancy and stay there as if they wished to be considered permanent attachments. All Oliver has been able to realize for the last two hours is the mere declarative fact that she is _there_.