‘Oh, but you cannot mean it, you cannot mean it!’

’Indeed, I am in earnest, dear.  There is Vanderbilt.  Vanderbilt is almost the richest man in the whole world.  Now, if I were on my dying bed, I could say to you that not even he has two in his drawing-room.  Why, he hasn’t even one—­I wish I may die in my tracks if it isn’t true.’

Her lovely eyes stood wide with amazement, and she said, slowly, and with a sort of awe in her voice: 

’How strange—­how incredible—­one is not able to realise it.  Is he penurious?’

’No—­it isn’t that.  It isn’t the expense he minds, but—­er—­well, you know, it would look like showing off.  Yes, that is it, that is the idea; he is a plain man in his way, and shrinks from display.’

‘Why, that humility is right enough,’ said Lasca, ’if one does not carry it too far—­but what does the place look like?’

‘Well, necessarily it looks pretty barren and unfinished, but—­’

’I should think so!  I never heard anything like it.  Is it a fine house —­that is, otherwise?’

‘Pretty fine, yes.  It is very well thought of.’

The girl was silent awhile, and sat dreamily gnawing a candle-end, apparently trying to think the thing out.  At last she gave her head a little toss and spoke out her opinion with decision: 

’Well, to my mind there’s a breed of humility which is itself a species of showing off when you get down to the marrow of it; and when a man is able to afford two slop-tubs in his parlour, and doesn’t do it, it may be that he is truly humble-minded, but it’s a hundred times more likely that he is just trying to strike the public eye.  In my judgment, your Mr. Vanderbilt knows what he is about.’

I tried to modify this verdict, feeling that a double slop-tub standard was not a fair one to try everybody by, although a sound enough one in its own habitat; but the girl’s head was set, and she was not to be persuaded.  Presently she said: 

’Do the rich people, with you, have as good sleeping-benches as ours, and made out of as nice broad ice-blocks?’

’Well, they are pretty good—­good enough—­but they are not made of ice-blocks.’

‘I want to know!  Why aren’t they made of ice-blocks?’

I explained the difficulties in the way, and the expensiveness of ice in a country where you have to keep a sharp eye on your ice-man or your ice-bill will weigh more than your ice.  Then she cried out: 

‘Dear me, do you buy your ice?’

‘We most surely do, dear.’

She burst into a gale of guileless laughter, and said: 

’Oh, I never heard of anything so silly!  My! there’s plenty of it—­it isn’t worth anything.  Why, there is a hundred miles of it in sight, right now.  I wouldn’t give a fish-bladder for the whole of it.’

’Well, it’s because you don’t know how to value it, you little provincial muggings.  If you had it in New York in midsummer, you could buy all the whales in the market with it.’