“I don’t understand,” said Grafton. “It’s as though I should call myself Frederick of Grafton.”
“That is it; only in your country you write your names differently. I was talking to the American minister about it; he explained that you have your noble families as we do, only they don’t reign, but hold aloof from politics, except to accept the high appointments of state.”
Grafton laughed. “Did he tell you that?”
“Oh! I knew at once that you were of a noble family.”
“A noble family of—dress-fitters?”
Erica blushed.
“My father was a pork-packer,” continued Grafton. “And his father was a pork-packer, and before that a farmer, and—I had an aunt who was crazy on genealogy; she found out that we were descended from a blacksmith. And my mother’s grandfather was a carpenter—when he could get carpentering to do. We’re all like that in America.”
“It must be very—very queer.” She seemed disappointed, depressed.
“Every country seems queer to every other. This country seems queer to me. Do you really like it—that life at The Castle?”
“Why do you ask?”