“How long ago was that?” Sheldon asked.
“Last year—the year of the panic.”
“Let me see,” Sheldon pondered with an air of gravity. “Sixteen plus five, plus one, equals twenty-two. You were born in 1887?”
“Yes; but it is not nice of you.”
“I am really sorry,” he said, “but the problem was so obvious.”
“Can’t you ever say nice things? Or is it the way you English have?” There was a snap in her gray eyes, and her lips quivered suspiciously for a moment. “I should recommend, Mr. Sheldon, that you read Gertrude Atherton’s ‘American Wives and English Husbands.’”
“Thank you, I have. It’s over there.” He pointed at the generously filled bookshelves. “But I am afraid it is rather partisan.”
“Anything un-English is bound to be,” she retorted. “I never have liked the English anyway. The last one I knew was an overseer. Dad was compelled to discharge him.”
“One swallow doesn’t make a summer.”
“But that Englishman made lots of trouble—there! And now please don’t make me any more absurd than I already am.”