Smith reached for the toast-rack.
"And if there's one thing that irritates me," continued Kingsbury, "it's the spectacle of wholesome American girls marrying titles. Every time they do it I get madder, too. Short-sighted people like you shrug their shoulders, but I tell you, Smith, it's a terrible menace to our country. Beauty, virtue, wealth, all are being drawn away from America into the aristocratic purlieus of England and the Continent."
"Then I think you ought to see about it at once," said Smith, presenting himself with another slice of toast.
Kingsbury applied marmalade to a muffin and flattened out the newspaper.
"I tell you what," he said, "some American ought to give them a dose of their own medicine."
"How?"
"By coming over here and marrying a few of their titled women."
Smith sipped his coffee, keeping his novel open with the other hand: "We do that sort of thing very frequently in literature, I notice. There's an American doing it now in this novel. I've read lots of novels like it, too." He laid his head on one side, musing. "As far as I can calculate from the romantic literature I have absorbed, I should say that we Americans have already carried off practically all of the available titled beauties of Europe."
"My friend," said Kingsbury, coldly, "do you realise that I am serious?"