"Living, that is food, is very expensive," Elfrida replied quickly; "a good beefsteak, for instance, costs three Francs—I mean two and fivepence, a pound."
"I can't think in shillings!" Miss Kimpsey interposed plaintively.
"And about this idea my people have of coming over here—I've been living in London four months now, and I can't quite see your grounds for thinking it cheaper than Sparta, Miss Kimpsey."
"Of course you have had time to judge of it."
"Yes. On the whole I think they would find it more expensive and much less satisfactory. They would miss their friends, and their place in the little world over there. My mother, I know, attaches a good deal of importance to that. They would have to live very modestly in a suburb, and all the nice suburbs have their social relations in town. They wouldn't take the slightest interest in English institutions; my father is too good a citizen to make a good subject, and they would find a great many English ideas very—trying. The only Americans who are happy in England are the millionaires," Elfrida answered. "I mean the millionaires who are not too sensitive."
"Well now, you've got as sensitive a nature as I know, Miss Bell, and you don't appear to be miserable over here."
"I!" Elfrida frowned just perceptibly. This little creature who once corrected the punctuation of her essays, and gave her bad marks for spelling, was too intolerably personal. "We won't consider my case, if you please. Perhaps I'm not a good American."
"Mrs. Bell seems to think she would enjoy the atmosphere of the past so much in London."
"It's a fatal atmosphere for asthma. Please impress that upon my people, Miss Kimpsey. There would be no justification in letting my mother believe she could be comfortable here. She must come and experience the, atmosphere of the past, as you are doing, on a visit. As soon as it can be afforded I hope they will do that."
Since the day of her engagement with the Illustrated Age Elfrida had been writing long, affectionate, and prettily worded letters to her mother by every American mail. They were models of sweet elegance, those letters; they abounded in dainty bits of description and gay comment, and they reflected as little of the real life of the girl who wrote them as it is possible to conceive. In this way they were quite remarkable, and in their charming discrimination of topics. It was as if Elfrida dictated that a certain relation should exist between herself and her parents. It should acknowledge all the traditions, but it should not be too intimate. They had no such claim upon her, no such closeness to her, as Nadie Palicsky, for instance, had.