His wife held her peace for scorn. Then she said, “The gentleman is of a very good Boston family, and would no more think of engaging himself to a young girl without the knowledge of her friends than you would. Besides, he's been in Europe a great deal.”
“I wish I could meet some Americans who hadn't been in Europe,” said Mr. Erwin. “I should like to see what you call the simon-pure American. As for the young man's not engaging himself, it seems to me that he didn't avail himself of his national privileges. I should certainly have done it in his place, if I'd been an American.”
“Well, if you'd been an American, you wouldn't,” answered his wife.
“Why?”
“Because an American would have had too much delicacy.”
“I don't understand that.”
“I know you don't, Henshaw. And there's where you show yourself an Englishman.”
“Really,” said her husband, “you're beginning to crow, my dear. Come, I like that a great deal better than your cringing to the effete despotisms of the Old World, as your Fourth of July orators have it. It's almost impossible to get a bit of good honest bounce out of an American, nowadays,—to get him to spread himself, as you say.”
“All that is neither here nor there, Henshaw,” said his wife. “The question is how to receive Mr. Staniford—that's his name—when he comes. How are we to regard him? He's coming here to see Lydia, and she thinks he's coming to propose.”
“Excuse me, but how does she regard him?”