"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and drawing in her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her corner.
"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away the greatest swell I know."
"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, and gave a movement to her shoulders.
"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John.
"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and Australians—they're anything you like, but they're never that."
John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush,—the descendants of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!"
"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady Blanchemain, dryly.
"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate individuals who made the first voyage in the Mayflower. And he holds, by-the-by, intact, the lands that were ceded to his family by the Indians the year after. That ought to recommend him to your Ladyship,—an unbroken tenure of nearly three hundred years."
"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for respectability."
"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet."