“Well,” said Jone, “if we’re going to busy our minds with these people’s shortcomings and long-goings, and don’t try to reform them, we’re just worrying ourselves and doing them no good, and I don’t think it will pay.  Now, for instance, there’s that rosy-cheeked Hannah.  She’s satisfied with her way of speaking English, and Miss Pondar understands it and is satisfied with it, and all the people around here are satisfied with it.  As for us, we know, when she comes and stands in the doorway and dimples up her cheeks, and then makes those sounds that are more like drops of molasses falling on a gong than anything else I know of, we know that she is telling us in her own way that the next meal, whatever it is, is ready, and we go to it.”

“Yes,” said I, “and as I do most of my talking with Miss Pondar, and as we shall be here for such a short time anyway, it may be as well—­”

“What I say about Hannah,” said Jone, interrupting me as soon as I began to speak about a short stay, “I have to say about everything else in England that doesn’t suit us.  As long as Hannah doesn’t try to make us speak in her fashion I say let her alone.  Of course, we shall find a lot of things over here that we shall not approve of—­we knew that before we came—­and when we find we can’t stand their ways and manners any longer we can pack up and go home, but so far as I’m concerned I’m getting along very comfortable so far.”

“Oh, so am I,” I said to him, “and as to interfering with other people’s fashions, I don’t want to do it.  If I was to meet the most paganish of heathens entering his temple with suitable humbleness I wouldn’t hurt his feelings on the subject of his religion, unless I was a missionary and went about it systematic; but if that heathen turned on me and jeered at me for attending our church at home, and told me I ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I’d whang him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy.  That’s the sort of thing I can’t stand.  As long as the people here don’t snort and sniff at my ways I won’t snort and sniff at theirs.”

“Well,” said Jone, “that is a good rule, but I don’t know that it’s going to work altogether.  You see, there are a good many people in this country and only two of us, and it will be a lot harder for them to keep from sniffing and snorting than for us to do it.  So it’s my opinion that if we expect to get along in a good-humored and friendly way, which is the only decent way of living, we’ve got to hold up our end of the business a little higher than we expect other people to hold up theirs.”

I couldn’t agree altogether with Jone about our trying to do better than other people, but I said that as the British had been kind enough to make their country free to us, we wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth unless it kicked.  To which Jone said I sometimes got my figures of speech hind part foremost, but he knew what I meant.