He was studying her, as one would a specimen of the thing you collect.
“Is Penn—Penn Ying——”
“Penn Yan, please.”
“Is Penn Yan your summer home or——”
“It is my all-the-year home. I was born there. This is my first adventure from the family hearth.”
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm might have made that speech.
“Ah!” he remarked. “Ah! That explains much.”
“Go on,” she smiled. “Spring it. What’s the answer? What is the ‘much’ my living in Penn Yan explains?”
“You are charmingly of the village; for which I am grateful. Otherwise, we should not have been on this delightfully unconventional trip.”
“Oh, you must see Penn Yan,” she chirped, “especially on Saturday night. Our Main Street is paved,” she added archly, “and we have an electric line and sweetly subdued arc-lights. But of course I don’t live in the throbbing town—that would be too exciting. We live far off down the Lake, in Jerusalem township. You see, Sir—Sir——” she hesitated, plucked out her steamer-list and went on, “—Sir Richard, we are really not even villagers; we are, I fear, hopelessly rural.”