's a farmer," said he, his eyes laughing.

"Well--I suppose I do. But then, of course, he's a gentleman farmer,
not an ordinary one at all."

"He's a gentleman in the way that all the good people in the country
round are gentlefolk, because they're self-respecting and kind-hearted
and intelligent. But he comes of generations of workers. They make no
pretensions to blue blood, though perhaps they may have some in their
veins, and don't think themselves superior socially to their own farm
hands--like that one over there. Nor do they consider themselves
inferior to anybody. Not that they would think of _asserting_ their
claims to equality with your friend Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, for instance.
They simply take it for granted that they are the equals of any other
American, or for the matter of that, persons of any foreign nations.
You will perhaps hear them talking about your king and queen as
'Edward' and 'Alexandra'; but they won't mean the slightest
disrespect."

"You needn't be afraid I shall misunderstand anything they may do or
say," said I. "My ideas about them are beginning to crystallise
already, as you thought they would. But I'm wondering at them all,
still. They're so utterly new to me, so absolutely different from any
types we have or could have at home."

"What would your mother the Duchess think of them--now, honour bright?
Don't dream you'll hurt my feelings because they're my cousins and we
come of the same stock."

I thought for a minute, and then I said:

"Mother would begin to patronise them graciously at first, as if they
could be classified with our farmers--I mean, the peasant ones, not the
younger-son or poor-gentleman kind. When she found she couldn't, she
would be inclined to resent it. Then, at last, when a dim, puzzled
inkling of the truth came into her head, and she found out that they
knew as much as she about books and politics and all sorts of
things--oh, I can hardly fancy exactly what she would feel; but I'd
trust Mr. and Mrs. Trowbridge or anyone like them not to appear at a
disadvantage with her, whatever she did with them. They wouldn't have
self-consciousness enough to be overawed by her, though she can be so
dreadfully alarming. Why, Mr. Brett, in a way I believe they're like
_Us_--more like us, really, deep down and far back, than a good many
enormously rich people I met at Newport, who think no end of themselves
and live in palaces, and know Royalties abroad. Just as I said once