“Ah! Well, I intend to be thought so, whether I am or not. If I see anybody looking at me as if they were criticising my nose and mouth I’ll just blaze my eyes at them and walk across the room.”
Tiny laughed. “The beauty carriage is half the battle. I’ve seen rather plain girls carry themselves as if they were satiated with admiration, and get far more than some modest beauty.”
“Youbetcherlife—I beg pardon, Tiny; I’ll never use a word of slang again—I vow I won’t. Is it true that Englishwomen use a lot of slang?”
“Smart Englishwomen have an absurd fiction that they are above all laws, and some of them are as vulgar as underbred Americans—I cannot say more than that. But like other properly bred Americans—Southerners, I mean, of course—I have my own standards.”
“But if you do not adopt their argot you may not get on over there,” said Lee, with a flash of insight.
“I should like nothing better than to be unpopular with people whose manners I did not like, and whose race for amusement bored me. They can think me just as provincial and old-fashioned as they like. There are always charming people in every society. The thing is to have the entrée, and then pick and choose.”
“I shan’t care at all about society when I’m married. Cecil and I will be frightfully in love, and live in an old castle, and stay out all day on the moors and in the woods, and climb fells and things.”
“So you fancy yourself in love with Cecil,” remarked Miss Montgomery. “You’ve been dreaming about him all these years.”
Lee turned as pink as one of the Castilian roses under her window. She had been imprudent more than once to-day and betrayed her precious secret.
“Well—it is rather romantic. I—well, you’d think about him in that way, too—you know you would.”