in that case they can't be very offensive."

Bessie Alden was silent a moment. "I don't see what makes you talk that way,"
she said. "The English are a great people."

"Exactly; and that is just the way they have grown great--
by dropping you when you have ceased to be useful.
People say they are not clever; but I think they are very clever."

"You know you have liked them--all the Englishmen you have seen," said Bessie.

"They have liked me," her sister rejoined; "it would be more correct
to say that. And, of course, one likes that."

Bessie Alden resumed for some moments her studies in sea green.
"Well," she said, "whether they like me or not, I mean to like them.
And happily," she added, "Lord Lambeth does not owe me ten pounds."

During the first few days after their arrival at Jones's Hotel our charming
Americans were much occupied with what they would have called looking
about them. They found occasion to make a large number of purchases,
and their opportunities for conversation were such only as were offered
by the deferential London shopmen. Bessie Alden, even in driving
from the station, took an immense fancy to the British metropolis,
and at the risk of exhibiting her as a young woman of vulgar tastes it
must be recorded that for a considerable period she desired no higher
pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab.
To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life,
and it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate
the trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston