“I suppose,” said Miss Kildare, with her eyes meditatively following a bronze-green humming-bird which was darting about a trumpet-vine on the piazza rail, “I suppose we shall have a hop here to-night. I shan’t reverse; and when my partners ask why, I shall tell them it’s the latest thing. One always likes to be as English as possible. Tell me something else that it’s toney to do.”
“Read nasty novels, written by women you wouldn’t sit in the same room with, and then gush about them afterwards. That’s a very fashionable amusement with the up-to-date young women.”
“Ugh, Pat, don’t be a pig. Besides, that wouldn’t suit my style a bit.”
“But why want to change, Elsie? Don’t you appreciate yourself as you are at present? I’m sure other people would.”
“That’s blarney.”
“No,” said Onslow, judicially, “I think it’s ordinary fact.”
“Is it really, though? I am glad. You know, I’ve thought lately my present stock-in-trade wouldn’t pass muster outside Florida. I can handle a boat in any weather, and ride anything that’s called a horse, and can dance decently in American fashion; but I can’t do anything else, except perhaps talk, if that counts.”
Onslow laughed. “You are refreshing,” he said. “But why this inventory of stock?”