"Well, earls are English."
"Earls don't sing."
"Why don't they?"
Serena tried in vain to imagine the English earl of her fiction reading warbling love songs out of a back window to an unknown charmer, but gave it up.
"I think he's a poet," Amelia whispered, "or maybe a musician—one of the high-strung, quivering kind, don't you know." They all knew.
"They're so sensitive—and responsive."
Amelia spoke as though a host of lute-souled artists had worshipped at her shrine and had broken into melody at her touch.
"Like as not he's only a nice American fellow. My cousin Sam at Yale sings like an angel. All he has to do is sing love songs to a girl and she's positively mushy."
Amelia looked reflectively at the last speaker.
"Well, I wouldn't mind so much," she said. "If he lives on this block his folks must be rich."