"There are many districts in the Highlands that we know very little of, but I had no idea that there were houses like this anywhere. I thought you all lived so very simply, and were spared all the difficulties that our rich have to undergo."
"In some parts of the Highlands that may be so. But in England it is different. People who lived in a house like this would be considered very fortunate, and they would certainly prefer it to a little house in a street."
"How very extraordinary!" she said again. "But wouldn't they be looked down upon?"
"Not at all. The people who live in the little houses are apt to be looked down upon."
"But don't the upper classes all live in little houses?"
"No, they live mostly in the bigger ones, some of them in much bigger ones than this; and the bigger they are the better they like them."
She became more and more interested. "I never heard anything like that before," she said. "I should think it must be rather nice, if all of them do it. Does the dirty set live in big houses? Oh, but I forgot, you don't have a dirty set in the Highlands."
"We do in England," I said. "But we don't kow-tow to them as people seem to do here. If Lord Potter were to show his face there he would be liable to be locked up. We consider dirt a disgrace."
"Oh, so do we," she said hastily. "My aunt, Lady Blueberry, who is really a great lady, won't have anything to do with the dirty set. My Uncle Blueberry says that the old tradition of Upsidonia was not even extreme poverty, but only just so much as to escape the horrible burdens of wealth."
"Is your uncle——?"