He winked at one of the maids significantly, and when she drew near and bent her head whispered to her. She left the dining room; in about five minutes she reappeared with a decanter of Scotch whiskey, a tall glass, a bowl of ice, and a bottle of imported soda on her tray.
“Why, father!” exclaimed Nelly, “where did that come from?”
Barney beamed, triumphant. “We’ve got neighbours, haven’t we?”
“But what will they think of you?” she asked, pretending to be shocked.
“I don’t know—and I don’t care,” he answered. “I never did spend much time in worrying about what my neighbours thought of me. Probably that’s why we’re here, and not in the poorhouse.”
After dinner Frothingham stayed with Nelly in the parlour instead of going to the club with Wickham. He had found many girls in America who thought they were natural or who affected naturalness as a pose: but here was the first girl, it so happened, who was really natural, without thinking anything about it. She had all the charm of the girls of his own country for him—he liked ingenuousness; and in addition she had the charm of knowledge. She knew the world, but she looked at it with ingenuous eyes—and he would not have believed this a possible combination. “How do these Americans manage it?” he said to himself. “Her father comes from well down in the lower classes, yet he has all the assurance of an aristocrat. And as for the girl, she reminds me of Evelyn—and Gwen.”
“Do you know,” he said to her, “you don’t suggest an American girl at all—that is, you do and you don’t. You women over here are cleverer than ours, but a good many of ’em lack a certain something—a—I don’t know just what to call it. It seems to me that—well, they are ladies, of course. But many of ’em—not all—but a great many of those I’ve chanced to meet—make me feel as if they were not exactly sure of themselves, as if they were trying to live up to something they’d read about or seen somewhere. I don’t know that I make myself clear.”
“Perfectly,” replied Nelly. “You mean that they act as if they weren’t satisfied with being the kind of lady they were born, and are trying to be some other kind—and don’t succeed at it especially well.”
“Exactly,” said Frothingham. “I feel like saying to them, ‘Oh, come now, chuck it, won’t you, and let’s see what you’re really like.’ But you—you remind me of our women, except that they’re so ghastly dull—the most of ’em. Gad, they sit about in the country until they’re feeble-minded. After a certain age, about all there is left of ’em is the match-making instinct. You’d understand if you’d been over there.”
“I have been there,” answered Nelly. “I spent more than a year in Europe—nearly half of it in your country. I liked it, but—well, one likes one’s own country best, of course.”