Chapter 20

XX.

Of course we must dine with Mrs. Carfry, dearest,"
Archer said; and his wife looked at him with an
anxious frown across the monumental Britannia ware of
their lodging house breakfast-table.

In all the rainy desert of autumnal London there
were only two people whom the Newland Archers
knew; and these two they had sedulously avoided, in
conformity with the old New York tradition that it was
not "dignified" to force one's self on the notice of one's
acquaintances in foreign countries.

Mrs. Archer and Janey, in the course of their visits to
Europe, had so unflinchingly lived up to this principle,
and met the friendly advances of their fellow-travellers
with an air of such impenetrable reserve, that they had
almost achieved the record of never having exchanged
a word with a "foreigner" other than those employed
in hotels and railway-stations. Their own compatriots--
save those previously known or properly accredited--
they treated with an even more pronounced disdain; so
that, unless they ran across a Chivers, a Dagonet or a
Mingott, their months abroad were spent in an unbroken
tete-a-tete. But the utmost precautions are sometimes
unavailing; and one night at Botzen one of the
two English ladies in the room across the passage (whose
names, dress and social situation were already intimately
known to Janey) had knocked on the door and
asked if Mrs. Archer had a bottle of liniment. The
other lady--the intruder's sister, Mrs. Carfry--had been
seized with a sudden attack of bronchitis; and Mrs.
Archer, who never travelled without a complete family
pharmacy, was fortunately able to produce the required
remedy.

Mrs. Carfry was very ill, and as she and her sister
Miss Harle were travelling alone they were profoundly
grateful to the Archer ladies, who supplied them with
ingenious comforts and whose efficient maid helped to
nurse the invalid back to health.

When the Archers left Botzen they had no idea of
ever seeing Mrs. Carfry and Miss Harle again. Nothing,
to Mrs. Archer's mind, would have been more
"undignified" than to force one's self on the notice of a
"foreigner" to whom one had happened to render an
accidental service. But Mrs. Carfry and her sister, to
whom this point of view was unknown, and who would
have found it utterly incomprehensible, felt themselves
linked by an eternal gratitude to the "delightful Americans"
who had been so kind at Botzen. With touching
fidelity they seized every chance of meeting Mrs. Archer
and Janey in the course of their continental travels, and
displayed a supernatural acuteness in finding out when
they were to pass through London on their way to or
from the States. The intimacy