'Why, Mrs. Dallas? Is he not going to live in America?'
'Probably.'
'Then why make an Englishman of him? That will make him discontented with things here.'
'I hope not. He was not changed enough for that when he was here last.
Pitt does not change.'
'He must be an extraordinary character!' said the young lady, with a glance at Pitt's mother. 'Dear Mrs. Dallas, how am I to understand that?'
'Pitt does not change,' repeated the other.
'But one ought to change. That is a dreadful sort of people, that go on straight over the heads of circumstances, just because they laid out the road there before the circumstances arose. I have seen such people. They tread down everything in their way.'
'Pitt does not change,' Mrs. Dallas said again. Her companion thought she said it with a certain satisfied confidence. And perhaps it was true; but the moment after Mrs. Dallas remembered that if the proposition were universal it might be inconvenient.
'At least he is hard to change,' she went on; 'therefore his father and I wished him to be educated in the old country, and to form his notions according to the standard of things there. I think a republic is very demoralizing.'
'Is the standard of morals lower here?' inquired the younger lady, demurely.