Mrs. Mac. Let me see, I don't seem to remember any secession; were we mixed up in what you call your Civil War?
(Here Sir Archibald caught my eye and smiled, almost a human smile it was.)
Jinny. No, but you had a good deal to do with the War of Independence. That was nearly a century before. (Sir Archibald was honestly amused here. He must know American history.)
Mrs. Mac. I thought your last war was called the War of Independence, because it made the negroes independent, but I must have got the two confused; and you've just had another small one, haven't you, though now I remember that we were engaged in only one of them, and that was before my time. It seems strange we should have gone across the ocean to help a younger country to fight its battles, but after all, blood is thicker than water. I had a nephew who went to America—Brazil, I think, was the name of the town—a barrister, Mr. George Forsyth; you may have met him?
Jinny. I think not; I seldom go so far from home.
Mrs. Mac. But you live in South America, do you not?
Jinny. I live in the south, but that is merely to say in the southern part of the United States.
Mrs. Mac. How confusing! I fear I can't make it out without the globes; I was always very good at the globes when I was a child. Cecilia, suppose after dinner you see if there is a globe in the inn.
Poor Miss Evesham! She is so pale, so likeable, so downtrodden, and she has been so pretty! Think of what is involved when one uses the past tense with a woman of thirty. She has fine hair and eyes and a sweet manner. As to the rest, she is about my height, and she is not dressed; she is simply clothed. Height is her only visible dimension, the village mantua-maker having shrouded the others in hopeless ambiguity. She has confessed to me that she dresses on fifteen pounds a year! If she had told me that her father was dead, her mother a kleptomaniac, and she the sole support of a large family, I should have pitied her, but a dress allowance of fifteen pounds a year calls for more than pity; it belongs to the realm of tragedy. She looks at thirty as if she never had had, nor ever expected to have, a good time. How I should like to brighten her up a bit, and get her into my room to try on Paris hats!
She and I, aided by Sir Archibald, have been to Stoke Babbage to try to secure a pony, sound, kind, and fleet, that will drag Mrs. MacGill up and down the hills. She refused the steeds proffered by the Grey Tor stables, and sent Miss Evesham to procure something so hopelessly ideal in the shape of horseflesh that I confess we had no expectation of ever finding it.