It may seem, perhaps, a trifle singular--but it is nevertheless
true--that Bessie Alden, when he struck her as dull, devoted some time,
on grounds of conscience, to trying to like him more. I say on grounds
of conscience because she felt that he had been extremely "nice" to her
sister, and because she reflected that it was no more than fair that
she should think as well of him as he thought of her. This effort was
possibly sometimes not so successful as it might have been, for the
result of it was occasionally a vague irritation, which expressed itself
in hostile criticism of several British institutions. Bessie Alden went
to some entertainments at which she met Lord Lambeth; but she went
to others at which his lordship was neither actually nor potentially
present; and it was chiefly on these latter occasions that she
encountered those literary and artistic celebrities of whom mention has
been made. After a while she reduced the matter to a principle. If Lord
Lambeth should appear anywhere, it was a symbol that there would be no
poets and philosophers; and in consequence--for it was almost a strict
consequence--she used to enumerate to the young man these objects of her
admiration.

"You seem to be awfully fond of those sort of people," said Lord Lambeth
one day, as if the idea had just occurred to him.

"They are the people in England I am most curious to see," Bessie Alden
replied.

"I suppose that's because you have read so much," said Lord Lambeth
gallantly.

"I have not read so much. It is because we think so much of them at
home."

"Oh, I see," observed the young nobleman. "In Boston."

"Not only in Boston; everywhere," said Bessie. "We hold them in great
honor; they go to the best dinner parties."

"I daresay you are right. I can't say I know many of them."

"It's a pity you don't," Bessie Alden declared. "It would do you good."

"I daresay it would," said Lord Lambeth very humbly. "But I must say I
don't like the looks of some of them."

"Neither do I--of some of them. But there are all kinds, and many of
them are charming."

"I have talked with two or three of them," the young man went on, "and I
thought they had a kind of fawning manner."

"Why should they fawn?" Bessie Alden demanded.

"I'm sure I don't know. Why, indeed?"

"Perhaps you only thought so," said Bessie.

"Well, of course," rejoined her companion, "that's a kind of thing that
can't be proved."

"In America they don't fawn,"