"You don't in the least understand the situation," said Meldon. "Mr. Simpkins and Miss King are both English, and in England they manage these things quite differently from the way we do here."
"Well, it's yourself ought to know about that, seeing that you're a Protestant."
"It's not so much a question of religion," said Meldon. "It's temperament. I don't suppose you understand what that means; but the fact is, that an Englishwoman wouldn't marry a man who hadn't been making love to her off and on for at least a week. If he hadn't got her thoroughly accustomed to his occasionally squeezing her hand, and offering to pick flowers for her, and picking up anything she dropped about, and— But I needn't go into details. The fact is, that if he hadn't made love to her pretty violently, she wouldn't consider it decent to marry him. That's the sort of people the English are."
"They're queer," said Callaghan, "and that's a fact."
"They are," said Meldon. "But we've simply got to take them as we find them. There's no use our trying to teach them better ways, for they wouldn't listen to us. I'm telling you all this so that you won't be shocked if you happen to see Simpkins kissing Miss King. It's no affair of yours, to start with; and, in the second place, there's no point in comparative ethnology so firmly established as the fact that morality is quite a different thing among different peoples. What would be wrong for you and me may be, and is, perfectly right for Miss King and Simpkins. I needn't go into that more fully. All you have to do is to crack up Simpkins as a first-rate sort of man that any girl would be lucky if she married; and then let me know how they hit it off together when they meet."
"I'll do it. I'd do more than that to oblige your reverence in the matter of making a match for any boy about the place; for I'm not one to spoil his chances on a boy, not if I hated him worse than I do Simpkins."
"Very well. Now I want to speak a few words to Miss King, but it won't do for me to wake her up. She wouldn't like it; and what's more, she might suspect that we'd been talking together about her. I'll go back to the house and walk over here across the lawn. I'll signal to you as soon as I'm ready to start, and then you go over and wake Miss King."
"I wouldn't like to do it. I'd be ashamed, for fear she might think I was taking a liberty."
"I don't want you to go and shake her," said Meldon, "or pour cold water over her, or anything of that sort. Just take your scythe over close to where she is, and as soon as ever I give the signal, you begin to scrape the blade of it with your stone and whistle a tune at the same time as loud as you can."
"'The Wearing of the Green,' or the like?"