He insisted that Canada was a great source and hope and I finally said: “Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You want England to whip the United States, don’t you?”
“Yes,” echoed both Percy and Charles heartily.
“Very well, then for peace and quiet’s sake, I’ll agree that it can. England can whip the United States both on sea and land. Now is that satisfactory?”
“Yes,” they echoed, unanimously.
“Very well then,” I laughed. “It is agreed that the United States is badly beaten everywhere and always by England. Isn’t Marlowe lovely?” and fixed my interested gaze on the approaching village.
In the first glimpse of Marlowe some of the most joyous memories of my childhood came back. I don’t know whether you as a boy or a girl loved to look in your first reader at pictures of quaint little towns with birds flying above belfries and gabled roofs standing free in some clear, presumably golden air, but I did. And here, across this green field lay a little town, the sweetness of which was most appealing. The most prominent things were an arched bridge and a church, with a square gray belfry, set in a green, tree-grown church-yard. I could see the smooth surface of the Thames running beside it, and as I live, a flock of birds in the sky.
“Are those rooks?” I asked of Percy, hoping for poetry’s sake that they were.
“Rooks or crows,” he replied, “I don’t know which.”
“Are there rooks in Amáyreeka?”
“No—there are no rooks.”