“It’s a girl from Girton College. It’s the most awful freak you ever saw. They’re really quite beyond everything. They’re so homely, and their hands and feet are so enormous, and their pins never pin, and their belts never belt. And no one has ever married one of them yet!”
She paused dramatically.
“I won’t either, then,” he declared.
She laughed at that, and touched up the cob a trifle.
“Did you live long in England?” he asked.
“Forever!” she answered with emphasis; “at least it seemed like forever. Mamma left me there when I was nineteen (she married me off before she left me, of course) and I stayed there until last winter—until I was out of my mourning, you know—and then I was on the Continent for a while, and then I returned to papa.”
“How do we strike you after your long absence?”
“Oh, you suit me admirably,” she said, turning and smiling squarely into his face; “only the terrible ‘and’ of the majority does get on my nerves somewhat.”
“What ‘and’?”
“Haven’t you noticed? Why when an American runs out of talking material he just rests on one poor little ‘and’ until a fresh run of thought overwhelms him; you listen to the next person you’re talking with, and you’ll hear what I mean.”