"I. Did you not know it? What did you take me for?"
"Why, English of course, like myself. You are exactly like an English person."
"I suppose you mean it for a compliment; thank you, therefore. I like England very much, so I don't mind being taken for an English woman."
"Of course you don't," said Imogen, staring. "It's the height of an American's ambition, I've always heard, to be thought English."
"There you are mistaken. There are a few foolish people who feel so no doubt, and all of us would be glad to copy what is best and nicest in English ways and manners, but a really good American likes his own country best of all, and would rather seem to belong to it than any other."
"And I was thinking how different your daughter is from the American girls!" said Imogen, continuing her own train of thought; "and how her manners were so pretty, and did such credit to us, and would surprise people over there! How very odd. I shall never get to understand the Americans. They're so different from each other as well as from us. There were some ladies from New York at Bideford the other day,—a Mrs. Page and a Comtesse de Something-or-other, her daughter, and a Miss Opdyke from New York. She was very pretty and really quite nice, though rather queer, but all three were as unlike each other as they could be. Do you know them in America?"
"Not Miss Opdyke; but I have met Mrs. Page once in Europe a good while since. It was before her daughter was married. She is a relative of my sister-in-law, Mrs. Worthington."
"Do you mean the Mrs. Worthington whose husband is in the navy? Why, that's Mrs. Geoffrey Templestowe's sister!"
"Do you know Clover Templestowe, then?" said the lady, surprised in her turn. "That is really curious. Was it in England that you met?"
"Yes, and we are on our way to her neighborhood now. My brother has bought a share in Geoff's business, and we are going to live near them at High Valley."