"But I thought that was the way of ways to get on."

"It's one of them. But it's one of the ways of being awfully out of it
too. There are so many!"

"So many Americans?" I asked.

"Yes, plenty of _them_," Mrs. Munden sighed. "So many ways, I mean, of
being one."

"But if your sister-in-law's way is to be beautiful--?"

"Oh there are different ways of that too."

"And she hasn't taken the right way?"

"Well," my friend returned as if it were rather difficult to express,
"she hasn't done with it--"

"I see," I laughed; "what she oughtn't!"

Mrs. Munden in a manner corrected me, but it _was_ difficult to express.
"My brother at all events was certainly selfish. Till he died she was
almost never in London; they wintered, year after year, for what he
supposed to be his health--which it didn't help, since he was so much too
soon to meet his end--in the south of France and in the dullest holes he
could pick out, and when they came back to England he always kept her in
the country. I must say for her that she always behaved beautifully.
Since his death she has been more in London, but on a stupidly