"But that is when the country is at its loveliest. What do they do with their country houses?"
"They shut them up—leave a few servants in them."
"Ah! I suppose they have to consider their servants. Otherwise it seems absurd for people who like the country to leave it when it is at its best."
"There are very pretty parks in London."
"So there are here. So we are not so very different in our tastes, you see."
"Tell me truthfully," I said, leaving this point; "don't you like wearing pretty clothes?"
She blushed, and laughed. "Perhaps I should if all my friends did," she said, but added a little primly: "You can be prettily dressed when you are poor, and you don't have to change your clothes two or three times a day to please your maid."
"You wouldn't have to please your maid in England," I said. "She would have to please you, and if she didn't you would get rid of her and have another one."
She looked at me incredulously. "That is the most extraordinary thing you have told me yet," she said. "Servants here are the greatest nuisance in the world. They won't let you do a thing for yourself if they can possibly stop you, and you can't call your life your own. How I envy my cousins sometimes, who can go where they like and do what they like without for ever being obliged to think of finding work for a lot of disagreeable superior servants!"