A Voyage of Consolation | Page 3

question of time. They've had so much time in England. You see the effects of it everywhere."
"Not at all. By no means. Our little strawberries rise," he declared.
"Do they? Dear me, so they do! I suppose the American law of gravity is different. In England they would certainly smile at that."
Arthur said nothing, but his whole bearing expressed a contempt for puns.
"Of course," I said, "I mean the loveliest nation after Americans."
I thought he might have taken that for granted. Instead, he looked incredulous and smiled, in an observing, superior way.
"Why do you say 'ahfter'?" he asked. His tone was sweetly acidulated.
"Why do you say 'affter'?" I replied simply.
"Because," he answered with quite unnecessary emphasis, "in the part of the world I come from everybody says it. Because my mother has brought me up to say it."
"Oh," I said, looking at the lamp, "they say it like that in other parts of the world too. In Yorkshire--and such places. As far as mothers go, I must tell you that momma approves of my pronunciation. She likes it better than anything else I have brought back with me--even my tailor-mades--and thinks it wonderful that I should have acquired it in the time."
"Don't you think you could remember a little of your good old American? Doesn't it seem to come back to you?"
All the Wicks hate sarcasm, especially from those they love, and I certainly had not outgrown my fondness for Mr. Page at this time.
"It all came back to me, my dear Arthur," I said, "the moment you opened your lips!"
At that not only Mr. Page's features and his shirt front, but his whole personality seemed to stiffen. He sat up and made an outward movement on the seat of his chair which signified, "My hat and overcoat are in the hall, and if you do not at once retract----"
"Rather than allow anything to issue from them which would imply that I was not an American I would keep them closed for ever," he said.
"You needn't worry about that," I observed. "Nothing ever will. But I don't know why we should glory in talking through our noses." Involuntarily I played with my engagement ring, slipping it up and down, as I spoke.
Arthur rose with an expression of tolerant amusement--entirely forced--and stood by the fireplace. He stood beside it, with his elbow on the mantelpiece, not in front of it with his legs apart, and I thought with a pang how much more graceful the American attitude was.
"Have you come back to tell us that we talk through our noses?" he asked.
"I don't like being called an Anglomaniac," I replied, dropping my ring from one finger to another. Fortunately I was sitting in a rocking chair--the only one I had not been able to persuade momma to have taken out of the drawing-room. The rock was a considerable relief to my nerves.
"I knew that the cockneys on the other side were fond of inventing fictions about what they are pleased to call the 'American accent,'" continued Mr. Page, with a scorn which I felt in the very heels of my shoes, "but I confess I thought you too patriotic to be taken in by them."
"Taken in by them" was hard to bear, but I thought if I said nothing at this point we might still have a peaceful evening. So I kept silence.
"Of course, I speak as a mere product of the American Constitution--a common unit of the democracy," he went on, his sentences gathering wrath as he rolled them out, "but if there were such a thing as an American accent, I think I've lived long enough, and patrolled this little Union of ours extensively enough, to hear it by this time. But it appears to be necessary to reside four months in England, mixing freely with earls and countesses, to detect it."
"Perhaps it is," I said, and I may have smiled.
"I should hate to pay the price."
Mr. Page's tone distinctly expressed that the society of earls and countesses would be, to him, contaminating.
Again I made no reply. I wanted the American accent to drop out of the conversation, if possible, but Fate had willed it otherwise.
"I sai, y'know, awfly hard luck, you're havin' to settle down amongst these barbarians again, bai Jove!"
I am not quite sure that it's a proper term for use in a book, but by this time I was mad. There was criticism in my voice, and a distinct chill as I said composedly, "You don't do it very well."
I did not look at him, I looked at the lamp, but there was that in the air which convinced me that we had arrived at a crisis.
"I suppose not. I'm not a marquis, nor the end man at a minstrel show. I'm only an American, like sixty