“That you are not an American. And you aren’t, are you?”
“No. You are right. I’m not--honor bright, as you say.”
She looked immensely pleased with herself, and said:
“I reckon I’m not always smart, but that was smart, anyway. But not so very, after all, because I already knew--believed I knew--that you were a foreigner, by another sign.”
“What was that?”
“Your accent.”
She was an accurate observer; I do speak English with a heavenly accent, and she had detected the foreign twang in it. She ran charmingly on, most naïvely and engagingly pleased with her triumph:
“The minute you said, ‘See ’ow near you can come to it,’ I said to myself, ‘Two to one he is a foreigner, and ten to one he’s English.’ Now that is your nationality, isn’t it?”
I was sorry to spoil her victory, but I had to do it: “Ah--you’ll have to guess again.”
“What--you are not an Englishman?”