“But if you’ve nothing that answers to Burke and Debrett, I don’t see how you can find out anybody’s pedigree,” objected Miss Smeardon. Then with an air of innocent curiosity and a glance supposed to be arch, “Are the Red Indians, the Negroes, and the Chinese in your so-called directories?”
“As many of them as are in business, or have won their way to any position among men no doubt are there, I suppose,” answered 106 Robinette straightforwardly. “I think we just guess at people’s ancestry by the way they look, act, and speak,” she continued musingly. “You can ‘guess’ quite well if you are clever at it. No Indians or Chinese ever dine with me, Miss Smeardon, though I’d rather like a peaceful Indian at dinner for a change; but I expect he’d find me very dull and uneventful!”
“Dull!––that’s a word I very often hear on American lips,” broke in Lavendar as he looked over the top of Henry Newbolt’s poems. “I believe being dull is thought a criminal offence in your country. Now, isn’t there some danger involved in this fear of dullness?”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Robinette answered thoughtfully, looking into the fire. “Yes; I dare say there is, but I’m afraid there are social and mental dangers involved in not being afraid of it, too!” Her mischievous eyes swept the room, with Mrs. de Tracy’s solemn figure and Miss Smeardon’s 107 for its bright ornaments. “The moment a person or a nation allows itself to be too dull, it ceases to be quite alive, doesn’t it? But as to us Americans, Mr. Lavendar, bear with us for a few years, we are so ridiculously young! It is our growing time, and what you want in a young plant is growth, isn’t it?”
“Y-yes,” Lavendar replied: then with a twinkle in his blue eyes he added: “Only somehow we don’t like to hear a plant grow! It should manage to perform the operation quite silently, showing not processes but results. That’s a counsel of perfection, perhaps, but don’t slay me for plain-speaking, Mrs. Loring!”
Robinette laughed. “I’ll never slay you for saying anything so wise and true as that!” she said, and Lavendar, flushing under her praise, was charmed with her good humour.
“America’s a very large country, is it not?” enquired Miss Smeardon with her usual brilliancy. “What is its area?”
“Bigger than England, but not as big as the British Empire!” suggested Carnaby, feeling the conversation was drifting into his ken.
“It’s just the size of the moon, I’ve heard!” said Robinette teasingly. “Does that throw any light on the question?”