“Well, he was a lovely fellow, and really a very good rider for an Englishman. Even Uncle Billy liked his riding. I met him afterward in London, and he was very nice. It was delicious to hear him give me advice.”
“Advice?”
“Yes; he talked to me like a father and I laughed at him like a sister. It actually grieved him when I sometimes went out alone. You see, I couldn’t always make Aunt Madeleine go with me. It worried him that I didn’t like his clothes. They simply didn’t fit and I said so. Then he patiently outlined his theory that it was bad art to have the clothes follow the figure. The American, he thought, dressed too timidly. The effect of the American’s clothes was too sweet. ‘A man should look superior to his clothes,’ he maintained. ‘And so,’ I said, ‘you have inferior clothes. How can a man better indicate his superiority to his clothes, how can he better dominate them, than by making them fit him?’ a remark which seemed to convince him that I was hopeless. At all events, he confessed that he’d never before had a girl find fault with his clothes.”
“I can fancy his being cut up about it. Do you do that sort of thing often?”
“If you mean find fault with a man’s clothes, no; if you mean tease a man for being too serious, yes.”
“I see; you are serious only when the man isn’t. Tell me: how do you find men in the average,—too serious?”
“At the wrong time—yes.”
“When you are older, my dear, you will find them less serious.”
“Which will prove what I say, that they are serious at the wrong time. Why should they be serious with me?”
“To be candid, it is all I can do to remain flippant enough.”