An International Episode | Page 9

say, we had better remain at the inn," rejoined his companion
presently. "I don't think I like the way he spoke of his house. I don't like
stopping in the house with such a tremendous lot of women."
"Oh, I don't mind," said Lord Lambeth. And then they smoked a while
in silence. "Fancy his thinking we do no work in England!" the young
man resumed.
"I daresay he didn't really think so," said Percy Beaumont.

"Well, I guess they don't know much about England over here!"
declared Lord Lambeth humorously. And then there was another long
pause. "He was devilish civil," observed the young nobleman.
"Nothing, certainly, could have been more civil," rejoined his
companion.
"Littledale said his wife was great fun," said Lord Lambeth.
"Whose wife--Littledale's?"
"This American's--Mrs. Westgate. What's his name? J.L."
Beaumont was silent a moment. "What was fun to Littledale," he said
at last, rather sententiously, "may be death to us."
"What do you mean by that?" asked his kinsman. "I am as good a man
as Littledale."
"My dear boy, I hope you won't begin to flirt," said Percy Beaumont.
"I don't care. I daresay I shan't begin."
"With a married woman, if she's bent upon it, it's all very well,"
Beaumont expounded. "But our friend mentioned a young lady--a sister,
a sister-in-law. For God's sake, don't get entangled with her!"
"How do you mean entangled?"
"Depend upon it she will try to hook you."
"Oh, bother!" said Lord Lambeth.
"American girls are very clever," urged his companion.
"So much the better," the young man declared.
"I fancy they are always up to some game of that sort," Beaumont
continued.

"They can't be worse than they are in England," said Lord Lambeth
judicially.
"Ah, but in England," replied Beaumont, "you have got your natural
protectors. You have got your mother and sisters."
"My mother and sisters--" began the young nobleman with a certain
energy. But he stopped in time, puffing at his cigar.
"Your mother spoke to me about it, with tears in her eyes," said Percy
Beaumont. "She said she felt very nervous. I promised to keep you out
of mischief."
"You had better take care of yourself," said the object of maternal and
ducal solicitude.
"Ah," rejoined the young barrister, "I haven't the expectation of a
hundred thousand a year, not to mention other attractions."
"Well," said Lord Lambeth, "don't cry out before you're hurt!"
It was certainly very much cooler at Newport, where our travelers
found themselves assigned to a couple of diminutive bedrooms in a
faraway angle of an immense hotel. They had gone ashore in the early
summer twilight and had very promptly put themselves to bed; thanks
to which circumstance and to their having, during the previous hours,
in their commodious cabin, slept the sleep of youth and health, they
began to feel, toward eleven o'clock, very alert and inquisitive. They
looked out of their windows across a row of small green fields,
bordered with low stone walls of rude construction, and saw a deep
blue ocean lying beneath a deep blue sky, and flecked now and then
with scintillating patches of foam. A strong, fresh breeze came in
through the curtainless casements and prompted our young men to
observe, generally, that it didn't seem half a bad climate. They made
other observations after they had emerged from their rooms in pursuit
of breakfast--a meal of which they partook in a huge bare hall, where a
hundred Negroes, in white jackets, were shuffling about upon an
uncarpeted floor; where the flies were superabundant, and the tables

and dishes covered over with a strange, voluminous integument of
coarse blue gauze; and where several little boys and girls, who had
risen late, were seated in fastidious solitude at the morning repast.
These young persons had not the morning paper before them, but they
were engaged in languid perusal of the bill of fare.
This latter document was a great puzzle to our friends, who, on
reflecting that its bewildering categories had relation to breakfast alone,
had an uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic dinner list. They found a
great deal of entertainment at the hotel, an enormous wooden structure,
for the erection of which it seemed to them that the virgin forests of the
West must have been terribly deflowered. It was perforated from end to
end with immense bare corridors, through which a strong draught was
blowing--bearing along wonderful figures of ladies in white morning
dresses and clouds of Valenciennes lace, who seemed to float down the
long vistas with expanded furbelows, like angels spreading their wings.
In front was a gigantic veranda, upon which an army might have
encamped-- a vast wooden terrace, with a roof as lofty as the nave of a
cathedral. Here our young Englishmen enjoyed, as they supposed,