Visiting-cards were produced shyly, and disappeared into a little black bag.
“I have never been in America,” continued Lady Wyvern-Gryphon. “But one of my daughters-in-law is American. She came from Philadelphia. Is that anywhere near your homes? You know it, at any rate.”
They confessed that they lived some fifteen hundred miles from Philadelphia.
“Indeed!” remarked her ladyship, not at all perturbed. “That is interesting. We have no conception of distance in this country. Now tell me, how does an American country town differ from a town like this? What does a street look like, compared with one of ours?”
“Wider, and straighter,” said Jim.
“With maple trees growing along,” added Sam.
“The houses are wooden,” continued Jim, warming up—“painted white, with a piazza, and wire doors to keep the flies out in—”
“And no fences between the houses,” continued Sam, almost shouting. “And none in front. You just step right down on the street.”
“And in summer-time,” interrupted Jim, with eyes closed rapturously, “when the sun strikes down through the maple trees, an’—oh, gee, I wish I was there now!”
After that our two lieutenants took entire charge of the conversation. They conducted Lady Wyvern-Gryphon, street by street, block by block, through their home town. They described the railroad station, where the great trunk track runs through and the mail trains pause for brief refreshment on their long journey to the Pacific Coast. They described the Pullman cars; the porters with their white jackets and black faces; they related, with affectionate relish, one or two standard anecdotes aimed at that common target of American sarcasm, the upper berth. They described the street-car system, and explained carefully that to get from Sam’s house to Jim’s you had to change cars at the corner of M Street and Twenty-first—