"Why, going around in a swallow tail to drawing-rooms with the women, like a tame tom-cat. If you do, you must be a truly good young man. If you don't, what do you do?"
"Very often I spend my evenings in a drawing-room."
"Oh, Lord! Do most young Englishmen carry on in the same proper way?"
"Why not?"
"Don't they go to music-halls, please, and dancing cribs, and such?"
"Perhaps. But what does it concern us to know what some men do?"
"Oh, not much. Only if I were a man like you, I wouldn't consent to be a tame tom-cat—that is all; but perhaps you like it."
She meant to insult and offend him so that he should not come any more.
But she did not succeed. He only laughed, feeling that he was getting below the surface, and sat down beside the piano.
"You amuse me," he said, "and you astonish me. You are, in fact, the most astonishing person I ever met. For instance, you come from America, and you talk pure London slang with a cockney twang. How did it get there?"