“Out home. Santa Felisa. Ever so many whens. Last one, just before we came away; to show the Plunketty man—Lord—what his own ranchmen could do. My father let me. Course.”
“Was he nice?”
“Who?”
“The Plunketty man-lord. What is a man-lord, any way?”
“Think I didn’t say it right. I mean lord-man. That is an Englishman. My father says he can’t find land enough in their little bit o’ island to buy, so he came to California an’ bought San’ Felisa. But he didn’t come again for twelve years, a’most. An’ I never saw him, an’ then I did; an’ he didn’t wear a cor’net at all! And he laughed like anything when I told him what Suzan´ said. An’ he ’xplained beautiful. He does have the cor’net, but he doesn’t have it for himself. It’s his houses’. An’ sometimes the women of ‘his house’ wear it, when they ‘want to make a stunnin’ show of theirselfs.’ But mostly they ‘have more sense,’ an’ leave it where it b’longs, ’mongst the family plates an’ ‘gew-gaws.’ That’s what he told me.”
“Gew-gaws? Ginger! Was he a really, truly, lively lord? Was he?”
“Live as anything. Live as you. Live as me or your papa. But, Beatrice, you shouldn’t say ‘ginger.’ My grandmother says it’s not c’rect to use ’spressions.”
“But there is—ginger! The cook puts it in molasses-cake. So there!”
“Well. It’s c’rect enough to eat, I s’pose. But little gentlewomen should show they’s little gentlewomen by their languages. So my grandmother says, an’ she knows. ’Cause she knows everything in this whole world.”
“She couldn’t! She isn’t big enough. My papa says nobody knows everything. An’ he talks mostest ’bout grammar, not gentlewomens. He wouldn’t let you say ‘hisself’ or ‘theirselfs,’—I mean if he could help it. ’Cause he wouldn’t me. An’ I know better ’n you, you see, ’cause I’ve been teached longer.”