“I? No. Live near here,” he says, and turns to resume his conversation with a lady.
I am seriously thinking of taking my departure before there is any active outbreak of hostilities, when I see a stout gentleman, with a very red face, approaching me from the farther side of the fireplace. I have noticed him staring at me with, it seemed, undisguised animosity, and I am preparing the retort with which I shall answer his request to immediately leave the house, when he remarks, in a bluff, cheerful voice, as he advances: “Bringin' your horses, I hear.”
“I am, sir,” I reply, in great surprise.
“Lumme was tellin' me,” he adds, genially. “Ever hunted this country before?”
And in a moment I find myself engaged in a friendly conversation, which is as suddenly interrupted by a very beautifully dressed apparition with a very long mustache, who calls my short friend “Sir Henry,” and consults him about an accident that has befallen his horse. But I began to see the theory of this reception. It is an Englishman's idea of making you—and himself—feel at home.
You eat as much cake as you please, talk to anybody you please, remain silent as long as you please, leave the company if you please and smoke a pipe, and you are not interfered with by any one while doing these things. To introduce you to somebody might bore you; you may not be a conversationalist, and may prefer to stand and stare like a surfeited ox. Well, if such are your tastes it would be interfering with the liberty of the subject to cross them. What was the use of King John signing the Magna Charta if an Englishman finds himself compelled to be agreeable?
This idea having dawned upon me and my courage returned, I cast my eyes round the company, and selecting the prettiest girl made straight at her. She received me with a smiling eye and the most delightful manner possible, and as she talked and I looked more closely at her, I saw that she was even fairer than I had thought.