“Is that your story?” asked Bessie Alden.
“Don’t you think it’s interesting?” her sister replied.
“I don’t believe it,” said the young girl.
“Ah,” cried Mrs. Westgate, “you are not so simple after all! Believe it or not, as you please; there is no smoke without fire.”
“Is that the way,” asked Bessie after a moment, “that you expect your friends to treat you?”
“I defy them to treat me very ill, because I shall not give them the opportunity. With the best will in the world, in that case they can’t be very offensive.”
Bessie Alden was silent a moment. “I don’t see what makes you talk that way,” she said. “The English are a great people.”
“Exactly; and that is just the way they have grown great—by dropping you when you have ceased to be useful. People say they are not clever; but I think they are very clever.”
“You know you have liked them—all the Englishmen you have seen,” said Bessie.
“They have liked me,” her sister rejoined; “it would be more correct to say that. And, of course, one likes that.”