"Of course you ought to have expected me. I am a little exclusive, but always make a point of coming here."
The young—no, he wasn't over young, but did his best to look so. Well, this foreign student just turned his glass on me, his impudent little eye stared right through at my bonnet. Then he looked at that finefied girl, and they both smiled at each other.
This riled me.
Then a couple of young ladies crowded by us, laughing a little. The divinity student turned his glass—eye and all—upon them, then he turned to the young creature by my side, and says he, curling up his wisp of a mustache:
"Now, really, miss, what is the reason all the American young ladies have the manners of chambermaids?"
I felt my Yankee heart spring straight up into my New England mouth; but the foreign snipe wasn't speaking to me, so I sat still and listened for what that young creature would say.
"The manners of chambermaids!" says she, "did you mean that?"
"Really—yes—I think they have, you know."
"Well, I will not contradict you, for you generally are right," says she, as meek as Moses—yes, Moses in the bulrushes, "but not quite all, I hope."
The mean thing couldn't keep from trying to wring a compliment for herself out of this insult to the general American female.