Chapter IV - Page 2

But I thought the conquering, which we all admit, was of much more recent date, when the pretty American girls began to come over. Then Englishmen at once capitulated."

"Yes," she cried scornfully. "And I don't know which to despise most, the American girls who marry Englishmen, or the Englishmen they marry. They are married for their money."

"Who? The Englishmen?"

The girl stamped her foot on the deck as they turned around.

"You know very well what I mean. An Englishman thinks of nothing but money."

"Really? I wonder where you got all your cut-and-dried notions about Englishmen? You seem to have a great capacity for contempt. I don't think it is good. My experience is rather limited, of course, but, as far as it goes, I find good and bad in all nations. There are Englishmen whom I find it impossible to like, and there are Americans whom I find I admire in spite of myself. There are also, doubtless, good Englishmen and bad Americans, if we only knew where to find them. You cannot sum up a nation and condemn it in a phrase, you know."

"Can't you? Well, literary Englishmen have tried to do so in the case of America. No English writer has ever dealt even fairly with the United States."

"Don't you think the States are a little too sensitive about the matter?"

"Sensitive? Bless you, we don't mind it a bit."

"Then where's the harm? Besides, America has its revenge in you. Your scathing contempt more than balances the account."

"I only wish I could write. Then I would let you know what I think of you."

"Oh, don't publish a book about us. I wouldn't like to see war between the two countries."

Miss Jessop laughed merrily for so belligerent a person.

"War?" she cried. "I hope yet to see an American army camped in London."

"If that is your desire, you can see it any day in summer. You will find them tenting out at the Metropole and all the expensive hotels. I bivouacked with an invader there some weeks ago, and he was enduring the rigours of camp life with great fortitude, mitigating his trials with unlimited champagne."

"Why, Mr. Buel," cried the girl admiringly, "you're beginning to talk just like an American yourself."

"Oh, now, you are trying to make me conceited."

Miss Jessop sighed, and shook her head.

"I had nearly forgotten," she said, "that I despised you. I remember now why I began to walk with you. It was not to talk frivolously, but to show you the depth of my contempt! Since yesterday you have gone down in my estimation from 190 to 56."

"Fahrenheit?"

"No, that was a Wall Street quotation. Your stock has 'slumped,' as we