The Trowbridges' neighbours are almost as nice as they are. After I had been here two or three days I was feeding the chickens with Mr. Trowbridge after "tea," when a man and woman came up the avenue. They were countrified looking and rather awkward, I thought at first glance, which was the only one I took, as I at once left Mr. Trowbridge to talk with the newcomers and went away. It wasn't Ide's time yet to sit with Albert, so I found an apple, and sat and rocked in the boat swing with a book I'd left there earlier in the afternoon. Presently, however, down ran Patty to ask if I would mind coming back to the house, as Mr. and Mrs. Engelhorn had come especially to see me.
"To see me?" I repeated. "What for?"
"Oh, I suppose they thought it would be polite to call," said Patty. "They're such nice people. They have the farm with the low house opposite this. Mrs. Engelhorn was a city girl. Her father is the best jeweller in Arcona, and her brother has the biggest steam cleaning establishment there. She's been beautifully educated, and he's very intelligent. I guess you'll like them."
"Oh, I'll come, of course," I said. "I didn't dream they wanted to see me." But I would much rather have stopped where I was and read the book. Of course it's only prejudice, and the way one has been brought up which makes one feel as if it were odd to meet tradespeople, and it's nonsense, too; for as soon as they get horribly rich nobody seems to mind nowadays, which shows how little sense there is in the idea. Still, I did want to laugh, though I was ashamed of myself; but a picture of Mother being called on formally by a steam cleaner would come up before me.
Mr. and Mrs. Engelhorn had put on their best clothes, and they were dears. I was as agreeable as I knew how to be, and after I had been with them a little while, I felt that it was they who were superior. They talked about the most interesting and learned things, just as Mr. Trowbridge does, and in the same simple, modest way. We went into the parlour, where Mrs. Engelhorn played as well as a professional, and sang exquisitely, in a cultivated contralto voice. I could have cried to see how work-worn her hands looked, as they flew so cleverly over the keys of Mrs. Trowbridge's splendid Steinway Grand piano, which is much finer and in better condition than ours at home. After they had gone, Mr. Trowbridge told me that Mr. Engelhorn is the greatest authority on geology in the State of Ohio, that he knows just as much about botany, and is a fine Greek and Latin scholar, having picked up all his knowledge himself without any University training. Americans are wonderful!
Other people just as interesting in different ways have been, since, and there was only one I didn't like. He came yesterday, and is a dissenting parson, a Congregationalist, I think, though I don't know what that means, or how it's different from a Methodist or a Presbyterian. He and his wife arrived to noon dinner, and I had to be civil because the Trowbridges respect them very much; but it was difficult when the man said that England was the most immoral and decaying country in the world, and his wife echoed him. He is a smug old fellow with a fringe of grey fluff growing out all round under his chin; and his upper lip, very long and shaved, is like the straight cover you see on mantelpieces in country hotels.
I summoned courage to stand up for England, and the wife--a fat, sallow creature with three chins and a dissenting-looking chignon--glared at me as if she expected white bears to crawl out from under the table and gobble me up.
"Why do you think England is such a wicked country?" I asked.
"Because, to mention only one reason [as if the others were too bad to tell] your clergymen are put into their places by patronage, without any regard to their qualifications as teachers of religion."
"At least they're gentlemen," I snapped.