"Well—but do you like England? Or don't you?"
"S'il vous plaît Londres?" quoted Chérie, glancing up at him and laughing. Surely, thought George, no other eyelashes in the world gave such a starry look to two such sea-blue eyes.
"In some ways I do not like England," she remarked, thoughtfully. "I do not like—I mean I do not understand the English women. They seem so—how shall I say?—so hard ... so arid...." She plucked a little branch from a bush of winter-berries and toyed with it absently as she walked beside him. "They all seem afraid of appearing too friendly or too kind."
"Perhaps so," said George.
"When we first came here your sister warned me about it. She said, 'You must never show an English woman that you like her; it is not customary, and would be misunderstood.'"
"That's so. We don't approve of gush," said George.
"If you call nice things by horrid names they become horrid things," said Chérie sternly and sententiously. "Natural impulses of friendliness are not 'gush.' When I first meet strangers I always feel that I like them; and I go on liking them until I find out that they are not nice."
"You go the wrong way round," said George. "In England we always dislike people until we know they are all right. Besides, if you were to start by being sweet and amiable to strangers, they would probably think you wanted to borrow money from them, or ask them favours."
"How mean-minded!" exclaimed Chérie.
George laughed. "You should see the mater," he said, "how villainously rude she is to people she meets for the first time. That is what makes her such a social success."