“You feel very funny when you don’t have to do it yourself,” she said, witheringly.

“You’ll never put it through.  You’ll back down and say ‘please’ before you have finished,” I said, and just then the maid knocked at the door.

I never heard anything like it.  My sister was superb.  I doubt if Bernhardt at her best ever inspired me with more awe.  How that maid flew around.  How humble she was.  How she apologized.  And how, every time my sister said, “Look sharp, now,” the maid said, “Thank you.”  I thought I should die.  I was so much interested in the dramatic possibilities of my cherished sister that when the door closed behind the maid we simply looked at each other a moment, then simultaneously made a bound for the bed, where we choked with laughter among the pillows.  Presently we sat up with flushed faces and rumpled hair.  I reached over and shook hands with her.

“How was that?” she asked.

“’Twas grand,” I said.  “The Queen couldn’t have done it more to the manner born.”

My sister accepted my compliments complaisantly, as one who should say, “’Tis no more than my deserts.”

“How firm you were,” I said, admiringly.

“Wasn’t I, though?”

“How humble she was.”

“Wasn’t she?”

“You were quite as disagreeable and determined as a real Englishwoman would have been.”

“So I was.”

A pause full of intense admiration on my part.  Then she said, “You couldn’t have done it.”

“I know that.”

“You are so deadly civil.”

“Not to everybody, only to servants.”  I said this apologetically.

“You never keep a steady hand.  You either grovel at their feet or snap their heads off.”

“Quite true,” I admitted, humbly.

“But it was grand, wasn’t it?” she said.

“Unspeakably grand.”

And for Americans it was.

We were still at “The Insular,” when one day I took up a handful of what had once been a tight bodice, and said to my sister: 

“See how thin I’ve grown!  I believe I am starving to death.”

“No wonder,” she answered, gloomily, “with this awful English cooking!  I’m nearly dead from your experiment of getting an English point of view.  I want something to eat—­something that I like.  I want a beefsteak, with mushrooms, and some potatoes au gratin, like those we have in America.  I hate the stuff we get here.  I wish I could never see another chop as long as I live.”

“‘The Insular’ is considered very good,” I remarked, pensively.

“Considered!” cried she.  “Whose consideration counts, I should like to know, when you are always hungry for something you can’t get?”

“I know it; and we are paying such prices, too.  Who, except ostriches, could eat their nasty preserves for breakfast when they are having grape-fruit at home?  And then their vile aspic jellies and potted meats for luncheon, which look like sausage congealed in cold gravy, and which taste like gum arabic.”