Isabel not being quite prepared with an answer, hesitating whether to regard the suave manner or the annoying matter of the speech, the Signora, who had overheard it, came to her aid.
“The fact is true, but the reason given is false,” she said. “I believe we Americans do almost always
speak of spending time. It may be because we understand better the value of it. But you should be aware, Mr. Coleman, that the Italians also use the same expression, and they are the last people with whom you can associate the idea of trade and hurry. One of their critics cites the word as peculiarly beautiful so employed, as if time were held to be gold. Your English friends, when criticising the American expression, were probably thinking of their great clumsy pennies.”
Mr. Coleman, who had not known that the Signora was near, stammered out a deprecating word. He had only asked for information.
“The English are bound to criticise us, and to regard our differences as defects,” she went on, addressing Isabel. “You must not mind them, my dear. In fact, educated Americans speak and write the language better than the same class of English do, and use far less slang. One frequently finds inaccurate and cumbersome expressions in their very best writers. The exquisite Disraeli says, ‘I should have thought that you would have liked,’ which is ineffably clumsy. I can give you, however, a model of the most perfect English in an English writer, and I do not know an American who equals him. I refer to T. W. M. Marshall. I almost forget his thoughts while admiring the faultless language in which they are—not clothed so much as—armed. He has little color, but a great deal of point. One might say he writes in chiar-oscuro.
“I have not the least prejudice against, nor for, any nation,” she continued, regarding with a little mocking smile her disconcerted visitor. “English people are as good as Americans, when they behave
themselves. They are not, however, so polite. Whatever peculiarities we may observe in our island neighbors, we are never guilty of the impropriety of mentioning them to their faces.”
Mr. Coleman was crushed, and the Signora left him to recover himself as best he might. She had thought him long since cured of his national habit of making such comments, and was not disposed to suffer the slightest relapse.
Marion, who had observed and watched for a moment the expression of Signor Leonardo’s face while Isabel spoke to him, began talking with him after a while, and soon found him a liberal—not one of those who make the name a cover for every species of disorder, but an honest man, of whom the worst that could be said was that he was mistaken.
“You think that we Italians are different from yourselves,” he said somewhat excitedly, as the talk progressed. “When you praise your country, and boast of it, you forget that we, too, may wish to have a country of which we can boast and be proud.”