"I'd like to come," George told him. "Could I—to-night? I don't know just how long I shall be staying down."
"Any time—any time. To-night, of course. There's nothing I like better than to talk about my birds, unless it is to eat them. Isn't that so, Claudia?"
"Yes, Father." Mrs. Beaufort was studying Dalton closely. His manner was perfect. It was, indeed, she decided, too perfect. "He is thinking too much of the way he does it." The one sin in Aunt Claudia's mind was social self-consciousness. People who thought all of the time about manners hadn't been brought up to them. They must have them without thinking. George was not, she decided, a gentleman in the Old Dominion sense. Dalton would have been amazed could he have looked
into Aunt Claudia's mind and have seen himself a—Publican.
"Father," she said, after Dalton had left them, "did I hear you invite him to dinner?"
"Yes, my dear, but he could not come——"
"I'm glad he couldn't."
"Why?"
"I'm not sure that he's—our kind——"
"Nonsense, he's a very fine fellow."