When we were alone the Scotch lady turned to me. "In England," she
said, "ladies never converse with their servants, particularly in the
presence of guests."

Then she sealed her doom. "Ladies never make gifts to their servants,"
she added. "Their secretaries, housekeepers, or companions disburse
their bounty."

I remembered the old U. S. A. An American chef waiter might hope to be
the father of a President. On the ranch I had cooked for men of less
education and much worse manners than this domestic who brought my
athletic husband's breakfast to his bedside and who happened to be the
proud father of twins.

I would learn table manners from an English lady of aristocratic birth
and social experience; but when it came to the human act of a little
gift to a faithful servant, I declared my American independence.

I was homesick for Wisconsin, homesick for real and simple people.
I wanted to go home! That night Tom and I had our first real quarrel,
and it was over my dismissal of the Scotch lady of aristocratic birth.
Life became intolerable for a while. I dragged through days of bitter
homesickness. Nothing seemed real. No one seemed sincere. Life was a
stage. Everybody seemed to be acting a part and speaking their pieces
with guttural voices. Even my husband's voice sounded different--or
else I realized for the first time that Boston apes London English. Tom
had learned his mother tongue in Boston, and now suddenly he seemed like
a foreigner to me simply because he spoke like these other foreigners.
The sun went out of my heaven. I was dumb with loneliness and sick with