"Then I spoke up. I swore I was awfully in love with you."
"You didn't."
"I did;—that you were, out and away, the finest girl I ever saw in my life. Of course you understand that her two daughters were there. And that as for manners,—unless the rain could be attributed to American manners,—I did not think anything had gone wrong."
"What about the smoking?"
"I told her they were all Englishmen, and that if she had been giving the party herself they would have smoked just as much. You must understand that she never does give any parties."
"How could you be so ill-natured?"
"There was ever so much more of it. And it ended in her telling me that I was a schoolboy. I found out the cause of it all. A great spout of rain had come upon her daughter's hat, and that had produced a most melancholy catastrophe."
"I would have given her mine willingly."
"An American hat;—to be worn by Lady Violet Clanfiddle!"
"It came from Paris last week, sir."