KATE CHOPIN - SELECTED STORIES<br />A Matter of Prejudice<br />&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />Table of contents<br />A December Day in Dixie<br />A Matter of Prejudice<br />A Pair of Silk Stockings<br />A Respectable Woman<br />At the &#39;Cadian Ball<br />Beyond the Bayou<br />Caline<br />Emancipation. A Life Fable<br />Her Letters<br />Regret<br />&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;<br />The train was an hour and a half late. I failed to hear any complaints on that score from the few passengers who disembarked with me at Cypress Junction at 6:30 a.m. and confronted an icy blast that would better have stayed where it came from. But there was Emile Sautier&rsquo;s saloon just across the tracks, flaunting an alluring sign that offered to hungry wayfarers ham and eggs, fried chicken, oysters and delicious coffee at any hour.<br />&nbsp;<br />Emile&rsquo;s young wife was as fat and dirty as a little pig that has slept over time in an untidy sty. Possibly she had slept under the stove; the night must have been cold. She told us Emile had come home &ldquo;boozy&rdquo; the night before from town. She told it before his very face and he never said a word &ndash; only went ahead pouring coal-oil on the fire that wouldn&rsquo;t burn. She wore over her calico dress a heavy cloth jacket with huge pearl buttons and enormous puffed sleeves, and a tattered black-white &ldquo;nubia&rdquo; twined about her head and shoulders as if she were contemplating a morning walk. It is impossible for me to know what her intentions were. She stood in the doorway with her little dirty, fat, ring-bedecked hands against the frame, seeming to guard the approach to an adjacent apartment in which there was a cooking stove, a bed and other articles of domestic convenience.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;Yas, he come home boozy, Emile, he don&rsquo; care, him; dat&rsquo;s nuttin to him w&rsquo;at happen&rsquo;.&rdquo;<br />&nbsp;<br />In his indifference to fate, the youth had lost an eye, a summer or two ago, and now he was saving no coal-oil for the lamps.<br />&nbsp;