out,
if the type aint too fine an' the paper mean beside, which it often is
in the ten-cent books; but, further than this, I must say, we aint got
no use for 'em.' At that he kind o' steps back, and looks as if he was
goin' to say somethin', but I puts in quick: 'But you mustn't think, my
earl,' says I, 'that we undervallers you. When we remembers the field
of Agincourt; and Chevy Chase; an' the Tower of London, with the block
on which three lords was beheaded, with the very cuts in it which the
headsman made when he chopped 'em off, as well as two crooked ones
a-showin' his bad licks, which little did he think history would
preserve forever; an' the old Guildhall, where down in the ancient
crypt is a-hangin' our Declaration of Independence along with the Roman
pots and kittles dug up in London streets; we can't forgit that if it
hadn't 'a' been for your old ancestral lines as roots, we'd never been
the flourishin' tree we is.'

"'Well,' said his earlship, when I'd got through, an' he kind o' looked
as if he didn't know whether to laugh or not, 'if you represent the
feelin's of your class in your country, I reckon they're not just ready
for a aristocracy yit.'

"An' with that he give me a little nod, an' walked off into another
room. It was pretty plain from this that the interview was brought to a
close, an' so I come away. The flunk was all ready to show me out, an'
he did it so expeditious, though quite polite, that I didn't git no
chance to take a good look at the furniter and carpets, which I'd 'a'
liked to have done. An' so I've talked to a real earl, an' if not in
his ancestral pile, at any rate in the gorgeousest house I ever see.
An' the brilliantest dream of my youth has come true."

When she had finished I rose and looked upon her.

"Pomona," said I, "we may yet visit many foreign countries. We may see
kings, queens, dukes, counts, sheikhs, beys, sultans, khedives, pashas,
rajahs, and I don't know what potentates besides, and I wish to say
just this one thing to you. If you don't want to get yourself and us
into some dreadful scrape, and perhaps bring our journeys to a sudden
close, you must put a curb on your longing for communing with beings of
noble blood."

"That's true, sir," said Pomona, thoughtfully, "an' I made a pretty
close shave of it this time, for when I was talkin' to the earl, I was
just on the p'int of tellin' him that I had such a high opinion of his
kind o' folks that I once named a b