It Pays to Smile

by Nina Wilcox Putnam

Not, of course, that the English are really foreigners, as my dear father often remarked. But I must confess that the soil of Liverpool felt quite foreign to me. It appeared, in fact, entirely unsteady and of a heaving disposition, more what one might have expected of the neighborhood of Vesuvius and the other earthquake countries. But Peaches only laughed at me when I called her attention to the circumstance.

"It's you that's unsteady, not the street!" she jeered. "Gee, what a town! What a country! They ought to see San Francisco! Why, we've done twice as well in half the time!"

I confess I was disappointed with what I saw of England, which was little enough, because Mr. Pegg stopped only long enough to pick up an English car, which had been ordered far in advance and was awaiting us at Liverpool. It was a monstrous affair of black trimmed with vermilion, and recalled to my mind nothing so much as the far-famed dragon which was slain by St. George—so strong and fierce and capable it looked. Richard, the chauffeur, almost wept at sight of it.

"Oh, baby doll!" he said over and over. "If that isn't some engine!"

"Some lug box!" remarked Peaches in that cryptic language in which she spoke to her familias. "Must have set pa back a bushel of berries!"

"I want to hit the trail for the Calais boat!" said Mr. Pegg. "We aren't going to stay in England. There's no art in England. I had an English remittance man working for me once and he told me so. He says all the good art is in the Catholic countries, except what has been smuggled out of them. He told me so, and he was a educated feller. He educated me out of the entire pay roll one week, and is now working for the U. S. Government in San Quentin."

"But, Mr. Pegg!" I ventured to protest. "Think of Westminster Abbey and the Tower and Stratford-on-Avon, the home of Shakespere, and—and real English muffins and English culture generally. Surely you do not intend to deprive your daughter of it?"

"Not by a damn sight. Meaning no offense, Miss Talbot!" said Silas. "But the trouble is they all speak English over here, and we got enough Boston accent right on your person. I figure that foreign travel is foreign travel, and I mean we should go right to Rome, the home of art; and after we do it up thoroughly, work back along the coast where they speak in Italian and French. Somehow it's foreigner!"

There was no denying that, and disappointed as I was I held my peace. Mr. Pegg had a way of ordering our existence ahead, as if we were a part of his business. And indeed I presently ascertained that the plunge toward Italy was at bottom a commercial undertaking. It was the orange and olive groves, not the art galleries, that lured him.

"I'm thinking of forming an American-Italian olive crushers' association," he confided to me as we sped alarmingly along a toy road amidst scenes which I am sure would have proved quaint had we been going slowly enough to see them. "And an orange trust that will be a world-wide proposition. Oranges are a great little fruit—eat 'em, drink 'em and preserve 'em—the wood is swell. A great game, Miss Talbot, that hurts nobody and is of benefit to all. I'm to meet this here Pagreleri, the president of the Sorrento Company; and while Peaches and you trot round to the picture shows—I mean galleries—I'll put in a little sight seeing on God's green hills! I'd rather see the prospect of a hundred thousand vats of brine and oil than the finest picture any artist ever drew."