'
'Perhaps they may all be the better for that.'
'Then I spoke up. I swore that I was awfully in love with you.'
'You didn't.'
'I did;--that you were, out and away, the finest girl I ever saw in
my life. Of course you understand that her two daughters were
there. And that as for manners,--unless the rain could be
attributed to American manners,--I did not think anything had gone
wrong.'
'What about the smoking?'
'I told her they were all Englishmen, and that if she had been
giving the party herself they would have smoked just as much. You
must understand that she never does give parties.'
'How could you be so ill-natured?'
'There was ever so much more of it. And it ended by her telling me
that I was a schoolboy. I found out the cause of it all. A great
spout of rain had come upon her daughter's hat, and that had
produced a most melancholy catastrophe.'
'I would have given her mine willingly.'
'An American hat;--to be worn by Lady Violet Clanfiddle!'
'It came from Paris last week, sir.'
'But must have been contaminated by American contact.
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