Chapter XX: About Jim and the Duke 297 (3)

When I was small, and my nurse talked on Sundays about heaven and hell, making the one sound incredibly dull, the other incredibly painful, I used to think that I'd rather go to neither, but just be stuffed, like Mother's Blenheim, Beau Brummel, whose soul I fancied had leave to stop in his body so long as moth and rust did not corrupt. He seemed rather out of things, though, poor dear, standing forever in the same position in a glass case, with one paw up begging for something which nobody gave, while the years dragged on; and I'd begun to feel as if I were falling into his state, when I was roused from a stupid dream by the man of the steerage suddenly looming over me.

"I beg your pardon," said he, taking off his hat, and speaking in a nice American voice, as nice for a man as Sally Woodburn's is for a woman. "Please don't suppose I mean to be rude or intrusive, but I wanted to tell you that I think you won't be annoyed again; and--just one thing more. May I thank you for your goodness on shipboard? It brightened what would otherwise have been a grim experience."

Blind Mrs. Ess Kay to pronounce this man not a gentleman, just because some strange circumstances had forced him to travel in the steerage! I did wish that, without his knowing it, I could have slipped into his pocket my thirty pounds!

"Oh, I did nothing," I answered. "It was the other people who did everything--the little that was done. It's I who have to thank you, for taking that person away. He and the other, who came just before, were so rude."

"They didn't mean to be rude," he said. "They wanted you to tell them something which they could put into their papers, and they live by doing that kind of thing. I did the best I could with them, but I wish I could have saved you from being annoyed in the beginning. I hesitated at first, for fear you might misunderstand, and think me as bad as they were; but I wish I hadn't now."

"After what I saw you do, at sea, I couldn't possibly have misunderstood," I said.

"Thank you for saying that," he returned, "though for what I did then, I don't deserve any praise. It was done on the impulse; and I'm used to salt water. As a child, I lived close to it for a time, in California, and swimming came almost as natural as walking. But I'm not here to talk about myself. It was only to tell you how grateful I was, and am, and shall continue to be, for your kindness on the ship. I couldn't go without speaking of this; and there's something now I'd like to ask. You won't be offended?"

"If it's something you want to tell me, I know it isn't the sort of thing which could offend," I said; but I didn't say it as calmly as it looks when written. I stammered a little, and got the words tangled up; and I felt my face growing hotter than ever.

"I thank you again. It's only this. If, while you're over on this side the water, there's ever any way in which a man--a man who'd be as respectful as your footman, and loyal as your friend--could possibly serve you--I wish you would let me be that man. I know it seems now as if such a thing couldn't happen; but nothing's quite impossible in this queer world, and--and anyhow I shall always be ready. You could trust me----"

"I know that!" I couldn't resist breaking in.

"I'm--employed for the present at a club in New York. If you'd send word to Jim Brett, at the Manhattan Club, there's nothing under the sun that Jim Brett wouldn't do for you, from finding a lost dog, to taking a message across the world."

"First I must catch my dog before I can lose him," I answered, laughing. "But if I do, or--or there's anything else, I shan't forget."

"That's a true promise, then; and I have to thank you for the third time. Now, I'm not going to trouble you any longer. Good-bye."

Without stopping to think who he was, or who I was, I held out my hand, and his good-looking brown face grew red. He took the hand, pressed it hard, once; dropped it abruptly; turned on his heel and walked away, without looking back.

I was so interested in going over the conversation in my mind, that I forgot to feel like Beau Brummel with one paw up in his glass case; and though I daresay ten minutes had passed, it hardly seemed two, when a wonderful little black image in the shape of a boy came sidling up to me, all rolling white eyes, and red grin, like a nice Newfoundland puppy. He had some newspapers tucked under his arm, but in his hand was a small basket of peaches almost too beautiful to be real. But then, weren't they--and wasn't he--part of my dream?

He grinned so much more that I was afraid his round black face would break into two separate halves, and looking at me with his woolly head on one side, he thrust out the basket.

"Fur you, missy," said he, with a funny little accent, for all the world like Sally Woodburn's.

"They can't be for me. There must be a mistake," said I, wishing there wasn't, for the peaches did look delicious; and there were two rosebuds lying on top of the basket; one pink, the other white. "I don't know anyone who could have sent them."

"The gent knows you, you bet, missy," replied the image. "He guv me a quarter and axed if I know'd my alphabet 'nuf to find letter 'B,' an' tote dese yere to the prettiest young lady I'd ever seed. Most wite ladies, dey looks all jes' alike, to me, but you's different, missy; an' I reckon de tings must be fur you."

I had a horrible vision of this compliment proceeding from _The Flashlight_ or _The Evening Bat_. "What was the gentleman like?" I asked.

"Like mos' any gent, missy, 'cept that he was powerful tall, an' I reckon if he keeps right on like he's doin' now, he'll get mos' as brown as me some day."

Then I knew that I was safe in taking the present; so I did, and gave the comical black image two or three little round white metal things I'd got from the purser when I changed some English money. I didn't know how much they were, and they looked ridiculously small, but he seemed pleased.

When he had run off, I turned my attention to the peaches. They were so big that there was room only for four in the basket, and they seemed dreadfully pathetic considering from whom they had come.

That poor fellow must be almost penniless or he wouldn't have been in the steerage; yet he had bought peaches for me, and given a "quarter"--whatever that was--to his quaint black doll of a messenger. I could have cried; nevertheless, I ate two of the peaches, and reluctantly presented the other two, which I couldn't possibly eat, to a gloomy "B" child, sitting on a shawl-strap.

As if for a reward of virtue, just as I had disposed of my leavings, and stuck the roses into my belt, the last of the luggage arrived. There were two Custom House men near to choose from, and as I've heard, in choosing between two evils it's better to choose the less, I smiled beseechingly at the smaller man who had just crammed a pile of lace blouses into the box of a lady with nervous prostration.

Whether he was sated with cruelty, or whether he was naturally of an angelic disposition, I shall probably never know now; but the fact remains that, instead of turning out the Fiend I'd been led to expect, he was one of the most considerate men I've ever met. He wouldn't even let me unlock my own boxes, but took the keys and opened them for me himself. (Didn't an executioner braid the hair of some queen whose head he was going to chop off? I must look the incident up, when I have time.) Anyway, I thought of it when the Custom House man was being so polite; but the analogy didn't go any farther, for my head never came off at all, and two of the boxes remained unopened.

"You're English, aren't you?" he asked, and when I said yes, and that I was only on a short visit, he treated my belongings as if they were sacred. If he disturbed anything, he laid it back nicely, keeping up a running conversation as he went on. I told him that Englishwomen might bring home all the pretty clothes they liked from other countries, and that I considered it most ungallant in such a chivalrous nation as America to deny ladies a few Paris dresses.

"Do you happen to know, miss, what's the income-tax in your country?" he asked, tenderly putting back some yellow hairpins which had fallen out of a box of mine.

"Dear me, no," I exclaimed. "But I think it's sometimes more than a shilling in the pound; I've heard my brother say so; and as for the death duties, it's more than your life's worth to die."

"A-ah!" said the nice man. "We haven't got any income-tax on this side, and folks can die in peace, whenever they please. I guess that kind of evens things up, don't it?"

I didn't know what to answer, so I thanked him for his kindness, and we parted the best of friends.

Mrs. Ess Kay appeared so quickly afterwards, that it almost seemed as if she must have been lying in wait. She was looking pale and shattered, and Louise, following close behind, was positively haggard. Only Sally had weathered the storm without being outwardly the worse for wear; but even she didn't look as good-natured as usual.

"How have you got along, you poor, deserted darling?" affectionately enquired Mrs. Ess Kay, undismayed by a fixed gaze from Sally, which apparently signified reproach.

"It wasn't very bad, and I've quite enjoyed myself," I replied, forgetting some tedious moments in the light of others not tedious, and hoping that the roses in my belt might pass unnoticed.

Fortunately they did, otherwise I should have been in a difficulty; for I should have hated to vulgarise the little episode by putting it into story form for Mrs. Ess Kay; and presumably roses have not been taught to grow wild on the New York docks, although they say Americans are so very luxurious in their tastes one would hardly be surprised at anything.

A beautiful electric carriage, bigger than a brougham, was waiting for us, and we left Louise, with a butler or some other man servant out of livery, to wrestle with the luggage, and bring it in cabs (which they called "hacks"), up to Mrs. Ess Kay's house in New York, where I knew she meant to stop for a few days before going on to Newport.

The minute we drove away from the Docks I began to notice dozens of things which made me tremendously conscious that I was in a foreign country. One would think, as so many of these people were English, or anyway, British, before they were Americans, that their buildings and everything else would be enough like to remind one of home. But each street we turned into showed me that this isn't at all true in New York. There are bits like Paris--at least you think so, on a superficial glance--but nothing in the faintest degree like London.

Something in the air too, made me feel excited, as it does in Paris. Sparks of electricity snapped in my veins, and I had a presentiment of interesting things that must surely happen.

I've always been very sensitive to smells, which can make me joyful or miserable, just as music does. Vic says I oughtn't to tell people this, as it signifies I'm still in close touch with brute creation. But I don't much mind if I am, for so many animals are nicer than we are; dogs and horses, for instance; and then one has to acknowledge, whether one likes or not, that a monkey is a kind of poor relation. Each place I've ever visited has its own smell for me, and even houses and people. I would know the smell of Battlemead towers, if I were taken there by winding ways, with my eyes blindfolded. It's the smell of old oak, and _potpourri_, and books and chintz, and autumn leaves and pine trees, mixed together. Mother smells like a tea rose, and Vic like a wax doll. London has a rich, heavy scent, which makes you feel as if you had a great deal of money and wanted to spend it, but not in a hurry. The smell of Paris makes you want to laugh, and clap your hands and go to the theatre. The smell of Rome makes you feel as if you wished to be very beautiful, and move to the slow accompaniment of a magnificent church organ, with the Vox Humana stop drawn out. But New York--the smell of New York! How shall I describe the sensation it gave me, as Mrs. Ess Kay's electric carriage smoothly spun me up town? The heavy feeling of homesickness which I had had on the ship for the last few days was gone; and instead I felt a wild sense of exhilaration, as if I'd come dashing home after a glorious run with the hounds, and plunged into a cold bath with two bottles of Eau de Cologne poured into the water.

It was amazingly hot, but the breeze gave a hint of the sea, and every shop and house we passed seemed to keep spices stored away, for the breeze to blow over.

Even the old-fashioned houses, no higher than those in London, were as different from ours as possible; and it was extraordinary to see people--nicely dressed women, and pretty girls--perched on the front steps under awnings, without so much as a pocket-handkerchief lawn between them and the street. Persons of that class at home would be far too shy to lounge about and be stared at, not only by the neighbours, but by twenty strangers a minute; yet here they sat on rugs, and read, or did embroidery, or swung back and forth in chairs that rocked like cradles, paying no more attention to the passers than if they had been flies.

By and by we came out of the quiet streets walled in with monotonous rows of red brick or brown stone houses, into a scene of terror. It was a street, too; but what a street! I thought that I'd grown accustomed to motoring through traffic, for once Stan took me in his Panhard, all the way from Battlemead to Pall Mall, where he stood me a very jolly luncheon at the Carlton Hotel, but that experience was nothing to this. I felt a little jumpy with Stan when we shot between omnibuses in a space which looked twice too narrow, and once when I thought a frightfully tall horse was going to bite off my hat; but I soon got used to it.

If I were driven every day of my life for a year, through this terrible street in New York, though, I should be no more used to it on the last day than on the first. The only change in me at the end of that time would be in my hair, which would have turned snow white, and be standing up permanently all over my head like Struempel-Peter's, only worse.

London roars--a monotonous, cannon-balls-in-the-cellar roar, with just a light tinkle of hansom cabs sprinkled over the top of the solid sound; but that great straight street into which we suddenly flashed had no solid sound. It shrieked in short, sharp yells, made up of a dozen distinct noises, each one louder and more insistent than the other.

There were trams and tram bells, and motors and carriages, and over all an appalling thunder of trains rushing to and fro above our heads, on lines roofing the entire street, built upon iron stilts. Every minute they swooped by, running north and south, and I trembled lest they should leap their tracks and crush us into powder.

"It's only the Elevated, deah," said Sally, pitying my agitation, "and it's never fallen down yet, so I don't believe it will to-day. You shall take a ride with me if Cousin Katherine will let you, which she probably won't. You can't think what fun it is shooting past the windows of the houses; just like glancing into an exciting story book you know you'll never have a chance to finish. You do get a peep into tragedies and comedies, sometimes."

"My goodness!" I exclaimed. "I'm thankful I don't have to live in one of those houses. It must be impossible ever to take a bath, or to get engaged, properly."

Fortunately for my peace of mind, we didn't stop very long in that fierce street, but cut across again, and came out in Fifth Avenue, of which one seems to be born knowing a little more than of other streets in America. Just as almost everyone in English novels lives in Park Lane, so all the New Yorkers you read of live in Fifth Avenue; and I should have been disappointed if Mrs. Ess Kay hadn't, because in that case I should eventually have to go home without studying home life in the States from the right standpoint.

At first, I didn't see where the grand houses I'd heard of, kept themselves, for everywhere were smart shops, and public buildings, and--so close now that we could put down our sunshades--mountainous "sky-scrapers." The shops were beautiful, though Mrs. Ess Kay apologised for them by saying that it was out of season, and I'd never seen so much brilliance of colour or variety in a street. I tried to search for the cause of this effect, but I couldn't define it. Perhaps it was partly the clearness of the atmosphere, but there was a great deal more than that. Everything you passed seemed to be pink, or pale green or gold, or ivory white, or ultramarine blue; yet when you really thought it out detail by detail, it wasn't. And though I'd considered the sky-scrapers awful, from a distance, spinning along at their feet I couldn't deny them a fantastic kind of attractiveness.

At our rate of speed, I hadn't to wait many minutes for the grand Fifth Avenue houses; and oh, poor London--poor, dear London! I wanted to fly back and tear down Buckingham Palace.

Mrs. Ess Kay had always talked about her "New York home," which made it sound rather small and modest, so I was surprised when we stopped before a huge, square pile, built of rich-looking, rough brown stones, so nearly the colour of a Christmas plum pudding that it made me hungrier than ever to look at it. The house is trimmed with three wide bands of carving, made of the same kind of stone; and there are carved bronze railings and lamps on the porch; and the front door is carved, too, like the door of a cathedral.

We were let into a vestibule, all coloured mosaic and things; and that opened into a big, square, glassed-over garden, with a great marble fountain playing in the middle. I never saw such a wonderful place in my life, but until I got used to it, I couldn't help feeling that it was more like a splendid foreign hotel, than a mere house. The garden isn't a real garden, when you come to examine it, for it's paved with rare stones of different colours, like the jewels in Aladdin's Cave; but all round the fountain beautiful flowers are growing, and pink and white water lilies float in the marble basin. There are orange trees in pots, and a forest of tall palms, all of which are reflected and repeated over and over again in the mirrors of which the walls are made; and on the little tables standing about here and there among groups of inlaid chairs are bowls overflowing with roses. The roof is a skylight, over which creepers have been trained, so that the light which filters through is a lovely green. No doors are visible at first glance, but when you are initiated, all you have to do is to walk up to the mirror-wall, find a gold button, press it, and a door opens into a room as marvellous as the fountain court, round which, it seems, all the rest of the house is built.

"We'll have something to drink here," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "before we take off our things." So we all sat down, among the palms and orange blossoms, and a delicious sense of peace after storm stole over us with the coolness and the green dusk, and the perfume of flowers.

I supposed that "something to drink" at this time of day meant tea; but almost immediately a footman came through the glass wall, carrying a tray with nothing on it except tall tumblers. There were straws sticking out of the tumblers, and as the man moved, I could hear a faint tinkle of ice.

For a minute, I was bitterly disappointed, because the thought of tea had supported me for hours. But when I tasted the stuff in my glass I wasn't disappointed any longer. It had two or three strawberries, some bits of pineapple, and a white grape bobbing about on top, and it was full of chopped ice. I don't know what it was, for nobody mentioned it's name, and I was ashamed to ask, lest it might seem too ignorant; but it was good, and tasted as if it might have a little wine in it, mixed with fizzy water and other things. When I had drunk mine, I felt a different girl; quite merry, and so friendly towards Mrs. Ess Kay. I had never thought her such a nice woman. I laughed at almost everything that she and Sally said, and I said some rather funny things myself. Still, I'm not sure that as a regular thing, I wouldn't rather have tea.

We sat resting for some time, though I wasn't tired at all now. I could have run a mile, but suddenly I felt a little sleepy, and I was glad when Mrs. Ess Kay proposed to go to our rooms. Leaving the fountain court, we came into a hall, hung with tapestry; and from it a wide stairway led us up to a gallery, lighted from the top, which runs all round the house, with the doors of the bedrooms opening off from it.

Mine is so gorgeous that I haven't known one thoroughly comfy moment in it, since I came, except at night when I'm asleep.

One would think, as Battlemead is ranked among the finest old Tudor places in England, and people come on Thursdays and give shillings to see it (a very good thing for us, though it's extremely inconvenient, as it pays for all the gardens and all the servants' wages) that it would be grander than quite a new house, in a country like America. But Battlemead, in its palmiest days, must have been _shabby_ beside Mrs. Ess Kay's "home" in New York.

Our grandest bedroom,--the one where Queen Elizabeth slept--is quite a dull old hole compared to Mrs. Ess Kay's splendid room. Mine, at home, has all the furniture covered with faded chintz, and the curtains are made of plain white dimity. But I love the deep window seats where I can curl up among cushions, with a cataract of roses veiling the picture of the terrace with its ivy-covered stone balustrade, the sun-dial, the two white peacocks, and far away, the park with a blue mist among the trees. And I haven't learned yet to love my beautiful room at Mrs. Ess Kay's, though I admire it immensely--admire to the verge of awe.

It's pink and white and silver. The carpet is pink, and feels like moss, as you step. The wall is covered with pink and silver brocade, except where there are panels with Watteau-like pictures. The curtains are foamy lace, with the pink and silver brocade falling over them. The furniture looks as if it were made of ivory; there's a mirror in three parts, reaching from the floor half way to the ceiling, so that you see yourself in front, and two profiles, like astral bodies, things which I've always wanted to cultivate, as they would be so nice for trying on dresses, or making calls on dull people. On the dressing-table is another mirror, an oval one, framed with pink roses, each of which has an electric light hidden in its heart; and the bedspread is of pink and silver brocade to match the hangings, with a large, hard roll like an ossified bolster, at the top.

I believe it's that bed more than anything else, which makes me feel that it's always Sunday in my room at Mrs. Ess Kay's. I'm used to old-fashioned, ruffly pillows and a plain white coverlet smelling of lavender, on which I can flop down whenever I like, to read a novel or to have a nice little "weep." But there's no flopping on this gorgeous pink and silver expanse, and it's small consolation to know that no queen of England ever had one as handsome.

Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally escorted me to my room, when I came to it first. After I'd admired everything enough to satisfy them, I was taken to see the bathroom adjoining, and then a kind of wardrobe room opening out of that. I was almost prostrated by the magnificence of both, which pleased Mrs. Ess Kay very much; and in the grand wardrobe room, smelling deliciously, though faintly, of cedar, my poor boxes--already arrived--looked mean and insignificant. Mrs. Ess Kay's and Sally's huge "Innovations" would have been much more appropriate than my dress-baskets, which had been squashed into lop-sided deformity under heavier things, in the hold.

Louise was on the scene armed with my keys and Mrs. Ess Kay wouldn't hear of letting me do anything myself. "_Now_, I'll explain why I had to desert you on the dock," she said. "Or perhaps I needn't explain. If you watch Louise unpacking for a few minutes, you'll see for yourself. And I do hope, sweet child, that you'll excuse my taking a liberty."

This made me curious. Louise opened one of my boxes which had been labelled "Not Wanted," and I could hardly believe my eyes when she lifted out an exquisite poppy-coloured chiffon, embroidered with sprays of golden holly and berries made of some gleaming red jewel.

"Why, there's been some extraordinary mistake!" I exclaimed. "That can't be my box. I've no such dress."

"I know, love, but I _have_," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "and thanks to you, I've got it, and several others, through without paying duty. I thought you wouldn't mind, you're such a dear pet, and it's been _such_ an accommodation. Not that I care about the money, but I do love to get the best of those Fiends at the Custom House, and I _have_, for once. You see, it was like this. When Louise went to the baggage room to get out some things for you, I had them put in my trunks, afterwards, and some of my dresses changed into yours, as your frocks had all been worn and mine hadn't. I told Louise to put my things down at the bottom, some in each of your trunks, and I was pretty sure the man wouldn't touch them, as you're a British subject. I trusted to luck that you'd be too 'cute to say anything and give me away, if you saw the dresses while your trunks were being examined, but I just _hoped_ he wouldn't dig down to them. I dared not tell you what was going on, as Sally said I ought to, because if I had you might have refused, or else spoiled everything by being self-conscious. If you'd been with me, the Fiends might have caught on to our little game, they're so suspicious; but where you were, they never suspected any connection between us. You're just a _Dear_."

I had been a Dear in spite of myself, but there was no use in making a fuss now the Dearness was all over, whatever I might have done if I'd known beforehand that I was to be a cat's-paw. Perhaps, if I hadn't been given the iced stuff with the strawberries, I might have been crosser; but fortified by that, I lived up to my reputation as a Dear, during the half hour of the unpacking.

When my frocks all hung in a row like Bluebeard's wives, in the cedar wardrobe, and I was left alone with them at last, my first thought was to plunge my imprisoned roses in water; my second, to do the same with myself.

The hope of tea (which hadn't been fulfilled) and a bath had kept me alive through those two hot hours on the dock; and now I could choose between several kinds of bath, each one more luxurious than any I had ever known. At home there's either the big bath, in the bathroom, or there's a tub in your bedroom, so it doesn't take you long to make up your mind which you will have. But here there were so many things I could do, that I grew quite confused among them.

There was the big bath, so big that two of our big ones at Battlemead could have gone into it; and instead of climbing ignominiously in, in the ordinary way, you walked down several glittering white marble steps. It was very alluring, but as the marble tank was so vast, I feared I might have to spend all the rest of the afternoon in getting it full of water. It seemed impertinent to make a convenience of such a splendid, early Roman sort of receptacle for a mere five minutes' splash; a bath of such magnificence ought, I felt, to be what Americans call a "function"; a ceremony for which you would prepare with perfumed ointments and ambergris, and protract for half a day, at least, not to be wasteful. Then there was the vapour bath, which you took in a kind of box, with a hole for your head to stick out; a porcelain sitz bath; and a mysterious shower bath into which you secretively retired behind canvas curtains, shaped like a sentry box.

I dared not try the vapour, for fear I should be steamed, like a potato; the sitz seemed as inadequate as a thwarted ambition; and to turn on the shower without knowing how much it could do, or how soon it could be stopped, appeared a desperate adventure. After all, I thought, it was less worrying with us. Here, whichever thing you chose, you would probably wish you had had the other, whereas at home you did what you could, and were perfectly satisfied.

I decided that I would toss up a coin; heads, the big marble tank; tails, the shower. It came tails, and I had a dreadful qualm, but _noblesse oblige_; one must be sporting. So I was; only the hot water wouldn't come, and apparently there was ice in the cold, which wouldn't stop coming, and it was very violent. I screamed once, and Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally and Louise ran to the door, which was embarrassing; but fortunately, I'd locked it, and they told me how to stop the iced water. When it was all over, I felt like a marble statue for hours.

Dinner was at half past seven, which seemed odd in such a grand palace of a house, because, of course, at home, for some extraordinary reason unless you are in the middle classes, you never have an appetite before eight, at the very earliest. If you're in France, or other countries on the Continent, you can be hungry sooner, and evidently it is the same in America. Perhaps, if I were scientific, I should be able to classify these differences as natural phenomena.

I had dressed myself early, and was ready a little after seven, because I thought it would be nice to sit in the fountain court; but just as I was going down Louise knocked at the door.

"I have come to help Miladi, and to bring her these flowers," said she. "They are with _mille compliments_ from Monsieur the Lieutenant Parker, the brother of Madame."

"But I have never met him," I said, gazing with wonder upon a group (bunch is too mean a word) of mammoth pink roses, with thickly leaved stems, longer than walking sticks. There were at least a dozen of these splendid creatures, loosely held together by trails of pink satin ribbon, wide enough for a sash. I had never dreamed of such roses. I almost expected them to speak.

"Miladi and the Lieutenant will meet at dinner," explained Louise. "It is an American custom that the Messieurs send always flowers to the ladies. Madame, and Mademoiselle Woodburn have received bouquets also, but these roses for Miladi are the most beautiful. Is it Miladi's wish that I untie the ribbon, and take out one or two for her to carry?"

I was on the point of saying "yes," because the flowers were so lovely, and because it would please Mrs. Ess Kay; but on second thoughts, I said "no," thanking Louise, and asking her to put the creatures' feet in water. Perhaps it would be as well, I reminded myself, to see this brother of Mrs. Ess Kay's (of whose existence I'd never heard) before I went about armed with his roses. I had already tucked the white bud, which had come to me on the dock like a dove with an olive branch, into the low neck of my frilly white muslin frock, and I gave it no rivals.

"Has Madame gone down?" I asked; for it occurred to me that it would be awkward to find myself alone for nearly half an hour with a strange man.

"I think Madame will be in the hall," said Louise, and satisfied, I descended in a stately way suited to the house, into the fountain court. Nobody was there, however, except a young man in evening dress, who jumped up from a chair, and set down a small glass out of which he had been drinking.

"Allow me to introduce myself," said he. "I know you must be Lady Betty Bulkeley. My name is Potter Parker."

I couldn't help wondering whether his friends called him "Pot," for short, and the thought made me smile more than I would have smiled at a stranger if it hadn't popped into my head. This seemed to encourage him, which I regretted; because you can see at once by his face that he isn't the kind who needs encouragement. It is something like Mrs. Ess Kay's face, only younger, with her square chin, and bold blue eyes as pale as hers. The likeness is all the stronger because Mr. Parker wears no moustache or beard, and his dark hair, which falls in two straight, thick blocks over his forehead, is parted in the middle. You would know, if you saw him riding a white bear at the North Pole, that he was an American young man. Why, or how, I'm not experienced enough in Americans to tell, but I'm beginning to think that all American men, and all American women, have a dim sort of family likeness to each other. With the girls, it's their chins and the way they do their hair; but with the men it's more mysterious. They look less lazy and more feverish than our men, yet at the same time more humorous; and their clothes seem always to be new.

Mrs. Ess Kay's nose turns down, and her brother's turns up, which is the principal difference in their features, and his makes him look very impudent, though rather clever and amusing.

"My sister wrote me about your dimples, Lady Betty," said he, when I smiled; and I screwed my mouth into prunes and prisms as quickly as I could.

"I should have thought such things were hardly worth writing about," said I.

"My impression is that they're worth about a million dollars an eighth of an inch," he replied, "and I bet they'd fetch that in a bear market."

I began to wish that Mrs. Ess Kay or Sally would come, for I'm not used to having persons who have just introduced themselves make remarks on my dimples or other features.

"Don't be mad with me," he went on, "or I shall think I've estimated them too low. On mature consideration, as we soldier chaps say at a court-martial, I should be inclined to set them higher. If you'll just show them again----"

"I think, if you don't mind," said I, "that I'd rather speak of the weather."

"I'm afraid you're not used to Americans," said he.

"I've met several, crossing, but none of them talked to me about--such things," I replied, rather primly.

"If they had, I should have challenged them," he retorted. "While you're staying with my sister, I consider myself a sort of guardian of yours, and part of my duty will be to keep off men--other men--with a stick, you see."

"No, I don't see," said I. "Not that there will be the least necessity for you to do anything of the sort."

"Oh, won't there? Well, you just wait till you get to Newport, and you'll find out differently. I've applied for leave on purpose to help Kath protect you, and I expect to put on a suit of chain armour under my clothes. But first, you're coming to visit me, at West Point."

"I don't think I am," I said.

"Oh, but you are. It's a promise of Kath's. And shan't I be proud to show you around? You shall see Flirtation Walk the first thing. It's what the ladies admire the most, at the Point. Perhaps you've heard of it?"

"No," said I. "And I never heard of West Point. Is it a suburb of New York?"

"Not much. It's our American Sandhurst. But you English people don't know anything about this side. I guess, now, you think that Florida is in South America?"

"I haven't thought about it yet," I replied.

"That's right. I don't ask anything better than to teach you the geography of the United States. We'll begin with Flirtation Walk. But see here, Lady Betty, that rose you've got on isn't a good sample of what we can grow over here. Didn't that maid of my sister's take you something a little better from me?"

"Something much bigger and grander," I said, feeling loyal to my poor white bud. "I was meaning to thank you."

"Don't do that; the things aren't worth it. I only wanted to know whether that French female had played me false or not. But here comes my sister. I wish she'd taken longer to do up her back hair. Now, I'll give you your wish, and talk about the weather. Mighty hot day, isn't it? Won't you have a cocktail? I'd just finished mine when you came down."

"Of course Betty will have a cocktail; we all do before dinner," said Mrs. Ess Kay, sailing towards us in a trailing white film of lace.

But Betty didn't have one, though at this moment several little glasses appeared on a tray. I was sure that Mother would not approve of cocktails for me, as it sounds so fast for a young girl who isn't yet out. When I excused myself, Mrs. Ess Kay laughed, and said, "Then what about that sherry cobbler?"

While I was trying to think what she meant, Sally came into the hall, and immediately after I was surprised by a kind of musical moaning which began suddenly and kept on for a long time.

"That's the Japanese gong," said Mrs. Ess Kay, when I looked round to see where the sound came from. "It's for dinner. Potter, give Betty your arm."

I was glad she didn't use that nickname I'd been thinking of, for if she had, I should certainly have laughed.

We began dinner by eating pinky-yellow melons cut in half and filled with chopped ice. I thought at first that it must be a mistake, and they ought to have come in at dessert, but everybody else ate theirs without appearing disconcerted, so I did mine, and it was good. So were all the other things that followed in a long procession, though they were very strange and some of them I shouldn't have known how to eat if Mr. Parker, whose place was next to mine, hadn't told me.

We had bouillon partly frozen, instead of soup; and then came the most extraordinary little fried animals which quite startled me, they were so like exaggerated brown spiders, done in egg and breadcrumbs. "Soft shell crabs, dear child," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "and you eat every bit, down to the tippiest end of his claw."

I should never have managed the green corn, which grows like lots of pearls set close together in rows on a fat stick, if Mr. Parker hadn't scraped all the pearls off for me, with a fork, and put butter and salt on them. I liked him a little better after that, for he did the thing with great skill. When I had got so far, nothing could surprise me, and I didn't turn a hair when I found that I was expected to eat pears cut up with salad oil. But they were alligator pears, and when you tasted them, it appeared that they had nothing whatever to do with the fruit kingdom. Best of all, I liked the watermelon which came at the end, cut in little balls, looking like strawberry water ice, and soaked in champagne. I hope that all the things to eat in America won't be so nice, or I may grow stout before I go back; and Vic says it is better for a girl to hang herself.

It was very trying, too, to find that I was keeping every course waiting. I've never been accused of greediness at home, though I've often been made to feel guilty of most other sins in the calendar, but I did feel queer when I began to realise that everybody else had finished what was on their plates, when I'd just about discovered what the thing was. It made me so uncomfortable to see them all leaning back waiting for me, after their plates had been whisked away, that I took to bolting the rest of my food, and by the time we'd got rid of nine courses in about half an hour I felt qualified to write the autobiography of an anaconda.

As for the iced water, I had intended to refuse it at any cost, because Vic and Mother both solemnly warned me that it made _all_ the difference between a complexion and mere skin. But the minute I landed, I began thinking hard about iced water, and I soon discovered that when you are in America a comparatively small consideration like a complexion would never keep you from drinking it. In fact, nothing would. You feel as if you must drink iced water, pints of iced water, in rapid succession, if not only your complexion, but your whole face were to be swept away in the deluge. Once you have got the taste nothing can quench it but iced water, more iced water, and still more iced water!

After dinner, while we were having heavenly Turkish coffee in the fountain court, who should come but Mr. Doremus. It seemed to me a funny time to call, but apparently the others didn't think it out of the way. He wanted us to go to some theatre on a roof, and I should have loved it, especially when Mrs. Ess Kay said you didn't get smudges on your nose as you would if you sat on a roof in London--a thing which I never heard of anybody except cats doing. But she was tired, and I suppose it would have been ladylike for me to be, only I was much too excited. So Mr. Doremus stayed, and he and Mr. Parker talked more slang in an hour than I think I ever heard in my whole life, though I have always considered Stan talented in that way.

But Stan's slang, and Vic's, are quite different from American slang. In America, you build up your whole conversation out of it, and it's wonderful. I longed for a notebook while those two men were talking, to put everything down, and I felt, if people were often going to be as funny as that, I should need to go home soon to rest my features. I'm not sure whether Americans really think funnier things than English people do, but their funny ideas are startlingly unlike ours. Somehow they seem younger and more bubbling. When I go home, I shall probably have collected so much slang in my pores that I shall talk about putting on my "glad rags" when I'm going to dress for dinner; my life will be my "natural"; I shall call Stan's motor car the Blue Assassin or the Homicide Wagon; I shall say my best frocks are "mighty conducive"; I shall get bored by poor Mr. Duckworth, our newest curate, and tell him he's "the limit"; I may even take to abbreviating my affirmatives and negatives by saying "Yep" and "Nope" when I'm in a hurry; but if I do fall into these ways, I tremble to think what may be the effect on Mother.

IV

ABOUT SHOPPING AND MEN

"Why, Betty, you never told me you were interviewed on the dock." These were the first words Mrs. Ess Kay said to me as I walked in to breakfast, a little late because of a wrestle I had had with a different and even more exciting kind of bath.

"I wasn't," said I, on the defensive; though I couldn't be perfectly sure what connection, if any, interviewing had with the Customs. "You told me not to declare anything, and I didn't."

Mr. Parker, looking as if he had been melted, poured into his clothes, and then cooled off with iced water, burst out laughing.

"You're a daisy, Lady Betty," said he.

"Is it invidious to be a daisy?" I asked.

"I guess I must look in the dictionary for 'invidious'; but a daisy's a flower that has budded in the green fields of England, where there aren't any newspaper reporters or other strange bugs."

"Potter!" exclaimed Mrs. Ess Kay, "don't tease her; and when you've been in the green fields of England you'll say _insects_, not--er--what you _did_ say, if you don't want ladies to faint all around you on the floor." Then she turned to me. "He means you're very innocent, because you don't know what it is to be interviewed. But you must have _been_ it, all the same, for see here, in this dreadful _Flashlight_." And she handed me a newspaper, with one page folded over, and huge headings dotted about at the tops of paragraphs, like the lines of big print that oculists keep to make you try your eyesight. In the middle column I saw my name, but I couldn't believe it was really there, in an American paper. I began to think I wasn't awake yet, and that this must be part of the dream I was dreaming all yesterday.

"BONNY--BETTY--BULKELEY," I read out aloud. "A Duke's Daughter on the Dock. Call Her by Her Front Name, Please. What Lady Betty Thinks of Our Boys."

There was more, but when I had got so far, I simply gasped.

"How _dare_ they?"

"There isn't much they don't dare, except to go back without a 'story'," said Mr. Parker, laughing. But I didn't laugh. I was too angry.

"If my brother were here, he'd kill them," I said.

"Then he hasn't got a sense of humour," replied Mr. Parker; "I don't see how a Duke could have, and be a Duke nowadays; but I guess I wouldn't mind swopping my sense of humour for a dukedom, all the same. See here, Lady Betty, you'll get to like our newspapers before you've been over here a month. They sort of grow on you. They're as interesting as novels, and almost as true to life."

"This isn't true to my life, anyway," I said, not knowing whether I wanted most to laugh or cry. "Oh, Sally, Sally _Woodburn_, will anybody believe I said such things as these?"

"Give the _Flashlight_ to me and let me look," she said. And when she'd taken the paper, she began to read the stuff that came under the big headings, out aloud, in her pretty, soft voice.

"Yesterday was a blazer, but though it was hot enough on the docks to roast a coon, when the Big Willie steamed in, that beautiful young visitor to our shores, Lady Betty Bulkeley, managed to look like the Duke's daughter and Duke's sister she is, and so far as a mere man could tell, without the help of patent hair curlers, or other artificial aids to personal pulchritude.

"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair, she sat on a throne of ducal luggage, looking queenly in an elegant white shirt waist, built mostly of holes and eminently suited to her style of beauty as well as the weather. She also had on a picture hat, which was superfluous as she would have been a picture without it, and below the waist she was tailor made."

"I think it's most insulting!" I broke in. "And I was made at home, all the way down."

But Sally went on: "I soon found [writes the representative of _The Flashlight_] that the sister of the Duke of Stanforth, one of Britain's eligibles, preferred to be addressed by her Front name of Lady Betty. 'I feel more at home,' said she, with a sweet voice, but a pronounced English accent, 'when I am called Lady Betty. And I want to feel at home in America, because I expect to be some time with my friend, Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, who will show me society over on this side. I have heard so much about Newport, don't you know? I fancy it will be too utterly deevy.'"

"What's deevy?" I demanded with scorn.

"Oh, that's supposed to be what smart Englishwomen say for divine."

"_I_ never heard it," I sneered, "much less said it. I'm sure Mother would consider it quite profane."

"Well, do be quiet, child, and listen to what _The Flashlight_ says you said." "'What opinion have you formed of our society women and clubmen, on board the Willie?' was the next question.

"'I think your ladies are better dressed than ours, and the gentlemen are just lovely. They don't sit around and wait while we girls amuse them, they hustle to give us a good time, and they know how to do it. I shouldn't wonder if I should hate to go home and associate with lords after being a summer girl in Newport. I don't see now why American girls go out of their own country to marry.'

"'I suppose we shall be seeing your brother, the Duke, over here before long?'

"'His Grace may come to fetch me back,' replied her ladyship. 'He has never been to America, but it is one of the desires of his life to come, and your American beauties had better look out, for he is a gay young bachelor, and I shouldn't be surprised if he took a fancy to carry home a Duchess. Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox will entertain him also, and maybe he will paint some of America red.'"

"That's all about you, I see," Sally finished up. "The rest is about Cousin Katherine and me. It says we've come back with a touch of the Piccadilly accent; and it criticises my nose, and the way Cousin Katherine puts on her hat. It describes this house all wrong, and says the Newport cottage 'knocks spots' out of Mrs. Van der Windt's cottage. It also mentions Cousin Potter, and calls him 'one of our Army Dudes.' But _we_ don't mind, and you mustn't. Everybody reads _The Flashlight_, for the sake of the shocks, but nobody believes its flashes."

"Still, you must have said something to the man," remarked Mrs. Ess Kay.

"I only said 'No, but--' or 'Yes, but--,'" I insisted. "Truly and truly nothing else. And oh, there was a _Bat_, too, who tried to talk to me."

"Great Scott! the _Evening Bat_," chortled Mr. Parker. "Look out for something rich to-night."

"Can't he be stopped?" I asked.

"Might as well try to stop Niagara--with a tin can; the less _you_ said, the more the _Bat_ will say. But it doesn't matter. Nobody'll care. Reporters are paid by the yard for imagination; information's gone out, though I do hear you use it still on your side."