“Tell her of old Aunt Havelock,” suggested Mumsie.
“What of her?” I said. I preferred anecdotes to Mr. Bang’s jeremiads.
“Aunt Havelock was my aunt; Jack’s great aunt. She was crossing from England in a sailing ship sometime between 1830 and 1840. The steward gave her a plate one day that had not been properly washed. She handed it to him, saying, ‘Sandy, this plate is not clean.’ The honest Scot took it, looked at it disdainfully and spat upon it, rubbed it with his apron, and handed it back to her.”
I shuddered. So did Mumsie. Horrid!
“I remember Aunt Havelock, when I was a small boy playing at her feet, a lady of excellent refinement, a model of the old school,” said Mr. Bang. “She had the most gentle, and sweetest voice I ever heard. When you consider, what she, an army officer’s wife, had to put up with, you can conceive what the treatment of the serving classes would be. No, No,” and Mr. Bang shook his head, “not many of the maids that went to Virginia as wives were honest.”
We were still a long way from the nuts and raisins. I was dreading lest Mumsie turned the conversation. What would be more natural, if she wished to do so, than for her to ask, “Elsie, what did you do with yourself this afternoon?” I shuddered at the thought. I must keep Mr. Bang talking.
“You think then, Mr. Bang, that no person came to America unless he had to?” I asked.
“Undoubtedly,” he replied. “Few leave England permanently to-day unless necessity compels. And the chief argument against the stories of the Fourth of July orators is that the lukewarm Briton, who comes to reside in Canada immediately turns into a redhot Imperialist. Human nature was the same yesterday, as it is to-day. It is against nature for any normal body of Englishmen to do what the Yankees did, no matter what the provocation.”
“But there were Englishmen who revolted.” I suggested.
“Puritanism was doubtless an expression of religious insanity,” he replied with fervour, “and then what child would believe his father a felon? The children of felons invariably believe their fathers the victims of oppression. No doubt the Yankee children were taught of bloody kings and dukes and earls—and of feudal oppression. Such legends are current even to-day. The highest expression of Yankee humour is that wherein the western bully spits tobacco juice on the patent-leather boots of the eastern dandy. Class intolerance is still active in Yankee land.”