Part 36 (1/2)
”I always feel so sorry for people who come up to town and go to live in those dens,” continued the young man. ”They eat nothing but filth.”
”Oh I say!” cried Willie Woodley.
”Well, and how do you like London, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth asked, unperturbed by this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.
The girl was prompt. ”I think it grand.”
”My sister likes it, in spite of the 'filth'!” Mrs. Westgate recorded.
”I hope then you're going to stop a long time.”
”As long as I can,” Bessie replied.
”And where's wonderful Mr. Westgate?” asked Lord Lambeth of this gentleman's wife.
”He's where he always is-in that tiresome New York.”
”He must have staying power,” said the young man.
She appeared to consider. ”Well, he stays ahead of every one else.”
Lord Lambeth sat nearly an hour with his American friends; but it is not our purpose to relate their conversation in full. He addressed a great many remarks to the younger lady and finally turned toward her altogether, while Willie Woodley wasted a certain amount of effort to regale Mrs. Westgate. Bessie herself was sparing of effusion; she thought, on her guard, of what her sister had said to her at luncheon.
Little by little, however, she interested herself again in her English friend very much as she had done at Newport; only it seemed to her he might here become more interesting. He would be an unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness, the picturesqueness of England; of all of which things poor Bessie Alden, like most familiars of the overciphered _tabula rasa_, was terribly at the mercy.
”I've often wished I were back at Newport,” the young man candidly stated. ”Those days I spent at your sister's were awfully jolly.”
”We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father's better.”
”Oh dear yes. When I got to England the old humbug was out grouse-shooting. It was what you call in America a gigantic fraud. My mother had got nervous. My three weeks at Newport seemed a happy dream.”
”America certainly is very different from England,” said Bessie.
”I hope you like England better, eh?” he returned almost persuasively.
”No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country.”
He turned his cheerful brown eyes on her. ”You mean it's a matter of course?”
”If I were English,” said Bessie, ”it would certainly seem to me a matter of course that every one should be a good patriot.”
”Oh dear, yes; patriotism's everything.” He appeared not quite to follow, but was clearly contented. ”Now what are you going to do here?”
”On Thursday I'm going to the Tower.”
”The Tower?”
”The Tower of London. Did you never hear of it?”
”Oh yes, I've been there,” said Lord Lambeth. ”I was taken there by my governess when I was six years old. It's a rum idea your going there.”