“Seems to me you have a queer idea of prettiness, Mayo. A few heaps of sand and a few miserable patches of trees don’t make a pretty scene, to my mind. How sensible people can be content to live on such a sandbar is more than I can understand.”
“Yet, Mr. Dunton, the men who first settled here were Englishmen and their descendants are still the owners of the land.”
“That may be so, Mayo, but I have heard the first English in these parts were a set of cranks who left England because they could not get along with their own people.”
“Then there must be quite a lot of that crankiness left in the blood,” answered Hoppy slyly. “The present inhabitants have no great welcome for their friends from the other side.”
“Any Englishman who would leave his own country for this savage place must have something wrong with him. You have no aristocracy here, Mayo, and any country without an aristocracy can never rank as a great nation. What would England be without her aristocracy?”
Hoppy was surprised to find Dunton in such a conversational mood and gave him every encouragement to talk.
“What good does an aristocracy do for England, Mr. Dunton?”
“Of course you Yankees can’t be expected to understand the matter, Mayo; but, for one thing, will you tell me how England could officer her army and navy unless she had an aristocracy to furnish the men for the positions?”
“I certainly can’t answer that question, Mr. Dunton, knowing so very little about your ways over there, but I have heard Uncle Jabez Rich say that a title does not make a man an aristocrat.”
“Whoever this Rich is, he’s a fool, Mayo. What’s a title for unless it be for the purpose of placing a man in the aristocratic class?”