“Ah, I told you they were not respectable!” proclaimed the Elder in triumph.
The Younger was touched in his country’s honour.
“My dear sir,” he objected warmly, “allow me to inform you that you entirely misconceive the case. I have not the slightest reason to suppose them other than the perfected bloom of respectability. Have you heard of our American inventions? Well, they are one of them—a mother and daughter, unattached. There are thousands in Florence. Rome is full of them. Certain Swiss and German cities contain only enough other inhabitants to lodge, feed, clothe, educate and divert them. In America you meet them on every corner. They have always emerged from some pre-existent, perhaps some inferior state of being, but without scandal; which, of course, is not to say that they are immune from the frailties of the race. But never be deceived by them again.”
The Elder smiled. “Must it be always that—a mother and a daughter? Can’t there be two daughters? Or another mother?”
“Never,” replied the Younger firmly. “If there are, then it’s another invention.”
“But there must be a man,” objected the Elder.
“No,” insisted the Younger, “there isn’t. There never is. You might ransack the universe and you wouldn’t find him. It’s like spontaneous combustion—and just as respectable.”
The object of this discussion being now indistinguishable in the dazzle of the Mediterranean, the Elder pursued his inquiry.
“If these ladies are of origin and habits so out of the ordinary, do they have names?”
“Rather! They are called Perkins, I believe. The young lady is Susannah. Her mamma is known behind her back as The General.”