My companion laid her hand an instant on my arm. “My dear young friend, I know America, I know the conditions of life there down to the ground. There’s perhaps no subject on which I’ve reflected more than on our national idiosyncrasies.”
“To the effect, I see, of your holding them in horror,” I said a little roughly.
Rude indeed as was my young presumption Mrs. Church had still her cultivated patience, even her pity, for it. “We’re very crude,” she blandly remarked, “and we’re proportionately indigestible.” And lest her own refined strictures should seem to savour of the vice she deprecated she went on to explain. “There are two classes of minds, you know—those that hold back and those that push forward. My daughter and I are not pushers; we move with the slow considerate steps to which a little dignity may still cling. We like the old trodden paths; we like the old old world.”
“Ah,” said I, “you know what you like. There’s a great virtue in that.”
“Yes, we like Europe; we prefer it. We like the opportunities of Europe; we like the rest. There’s so much in that, you know. The world seems to me to be hurrying, pressing forward so fiercely, without knowing in the least where it’s going. ‘Whither?’ I often ask in my little quiet way. But I’ve yet to learn that any one can tell me.”
“You’re a grand old conservative,” I returned while I wondered whether I myself might have been able to meet her question.
Mrs. Church gave me a smile that was equivalent to a confession. “I wish to retain a wee bit—just a wee bit. Surely we’ve done so much we might rest a while; we might pause. That’s all my feeling—just to stop a little, to wait, to take breath. I’ve seen so many changes. I want to draw in, to draw in—to hold back, to hold back.”
“You shouldn’t hold your daughter back!” I laughed as I got up. I rose not by way of closing our small discussion, for I felt my friend’s exposition of her views to be by no means complete, but in order to offer a chair to Miss Aurora, who at this moment drew near. She thanked me and remained standing, but without at first, as I noticed, really facing her parent.
“You’ve been engaged with your new acquaintance, my dear?” this lady inquired.
“Yes, mamma,” said the girl with a sort of prompt sweet dryness.