“Quite so, Mr. Vandewaters.” She smiled to think what an undistinguished name it was. It suggested pumpkins in the front garden. Yet here its owner was perfectly at his ease, watching the scene before him with good-natured superiority. “London is English; but it is very cosmopolitan, you know,” she added; “and I fancy you can see it is not a place for fast trotters. The Park would be too crowded for that—even if one wished to drive a Maud S.”
He turned his slow keen eyes on her, and a smile broadened into a low laugh, out of which he said:
“What do you know of Maud S? I didn’t think you would be up in racing matters.”
“You forget that my husband is a traveller, and an admirer of Americans and things American.”
“That’s so,” he answered; “and a staving good traveller he is. You don’t catch him asleep, I can tell you, Lady Lawless. He has stuff in him.”
“The stuff to make a good American?”
“Yes; with something over. He’s the kind of Englishman that can keep cool when things are ticklish, and look as if he was in a parlour all the time. Americans keep cool, but look cheeky. O, I know that. We square our shoulders and turn out our toes, and push our hands into our pockets, and act as if we owned the world. Hello—by Jingo!” Then, apologetically: “I beg your pardon, Lady Lawless; it slipped.”
Lady Lawless followed Mr. Vandewaters’s glance, and saw, passing on her husband’s arm, a tall, fascinating girl. She smiled meaningly to herself, as she sent a quick quizzical look at the American, and said, purposely misinterpreting his exclamation: “I am not envious, Mr. Vandewaters.”
“Of course not. That’s a commoner thing with us than with you. American girls get more notice and attention from their cradles up, and they want it all along the line. You see, we’ve mostly got the idea that an Englishman expects from his wife what an American woman expects from her husband.”
“How do Americans get these impressions about us?”