Isn’t that a splendid idea, Mamma?  He went on to say he studied psychology a good deal, and he found to look at life from that standpoint was the most satisfactory way.  He said it was no use mixing up sentiment and what you thought things ought to be with what things really were.  “We’ve got to see the truth Ma’am, that’s all,” he said.  Then he said, “these cotton wool ba-lambs” never saw the truth of anything from one year’s end to another, and, “it ain’t because it’s too difficult, but because they have not got a red cent of brains to think for themselves!”

While he was saying all this he never took his eyes off me, and he spoke with quiet force.  He went on and was too interesting expounding his theories along every line (I am getting American), and I looked up and caught Valerie’s eye, and she collapsed with laughter; she thought it quite funny that I should find him thrilling.  Presently I asked him what his views were about us in England, we of the leisure class, and he said he thought most of us were pretty sound because we did our duties and generally kept our heads.

“Now, I guess, Ma’am, your husband has quite a lot of business to do in a year?” and I said yes, that of course there was endless work in the management of a large estate, and politics, besides hunting and shooting, which was stern business with us!  Then he told me with them the leisured class had no responsibilities, except to keep an eye on their brokers, and so they got into mischief.

“’Tisn’t in the American blood to be idle,” he said; “they can’t keep straight if they are.”  After that I asked him what he thought about the English and American marriages among our nobility, and he got so vehement that he brought his hand down on the table and made such a clatter everyone looked.

It would take too long, Mamma, to repeat all his words, which were too quaint; but the sense of them, was that he would forbid them by law, because American girls to begin with had been brought up with the idea they were to be petted and bowed down to by all men, and no Englishman in his heart considered a woman his equal!  And then to go on with, they did not know a thing of the duties of the position, or the tenue which is required to keep up the dignity of an old title, so when it came to the scratch they were found wanting.  “Which of ’em’s got prestige, I ask you, Ma’am, in your country?  They may rub along all right, and when it is a question of society I guess they’re queens, but which of ’em acts like the real thing in the country, or is respected by the people?”

I really did not know what to say, Mamma, so he went on.  “They’re all right sometimes till the rub, and they may do better if they’ve been educated in Europe—­they are so mightily adaptable; but just an American girl like my Lola there,—­I’d rather see her dead than married to your greatest Dook.”