It may seem, perhaps, a trifle singular—but it is nevertheless true—that Bessie Alden, when he struck her as dull, devoted some time, on grounds of conscience, to trying to like him more. I say on grounds of conscience because she felt that he had been extremely “nice” to her sister, and because she reflected that it was no more than fair that she should think as well of him as he thought of her. This effort was possibly sometimes not so successful as it might have been, for the result of it was occasionally a vague irritation, which expressed itself in hostile criticism of several British institutions. Bessie Alden went to some entertainments at which she met Lord Lambeth; but she went to others at which his lordship was neither actually nor potentially present; and it was chiefly on these latter occasions that she encountered those literary and artistic celebrities of whom mention has been made. After a while she reduced the matter to a principle. If Lord Lambeth should appear anywhere, it was a symbol that there would be no poets and philosophers; and in consequence—for it was almost a strict consequence—she used to enumerate to the young man these objects of her admiration.
“You seem to be awfully fond of those sort of people,” said Lord Lambeth one day, as if the idea had just occurred to him.
“They are the people in England I am most curious to see,” Bessie Alden replied.
“I suppose that’s because you have read so much,” said Lord Lambeth gallantly.
“I have not read so much. It is because we think so much of them at home.”
“Oh, I see,” observed the young nobleman. “In Boston.”
“Not only in Boston; everywhere,” said Bessie. “We hold them in great honor; they go to the best dinner parties.”
“I daresay you are right. I can’t say I know many of them.”
“It’s a pity you don’t,” Bessie Alden declared. “It would do you good.”
“I daresay it would,” said Lord Lambeth very humbly. “But I must say I don’t like the looks of some of them.”