without respect or reverence
for any one; they had talked to General Triscoe as if he were a boy of
their own age, or a dotard whom nobody need mind; they had not only kept
up their foolish babble before him, they had laughed and giggled, they
had broken into snatches of American song, they had all but whistled and
danced. They made loud comments in Illinois English--on the cuteness of
the officers whom they admired, and they had at one time actually got out
their handkerchiefs. He supposed they meant to wave them at the officers,
but at the look he gave them they merely put their hats together and
snickered in derision of him. They were American girls of the worst type;
they conformed to no standard of behavior; their conduct was personal.
They ought to be taken home.

Mrs. March said she saw what he meant, and she agreed with him that they
were altogether unformed, and were the effect of their own ignorant
caprices. Probably, however, it was too late to amend them by taking them
away.

"It would hide them, at any rate," he answered. "They would sink back
into the great mass of our vulgarity, and not be noticed. We behave like
a parcel of peasants with our women. We think that if no harm is meant or
thought, we may risk any sort of appearance, and we do things that are
scandalously improper simply because they are innocent. That may be all
very well at home, but people who prefer that sort of thing had better
stay there, where our peasant manners won't make them conspicuous."

As their train ran northward out of Wurzburg that afternoon, Mrs. March
recurred to the general's closing words. "That was a slap at Mrs. Adding
for letting Kenby go off with her."

She took up the history of the past twenty-four hours, from the time
March had left her with Miss Triscoe when he went with her father and the
Addings and Kenby to see that church. She had had no chance to bring up
these arrears until now, and she atoned to herself for the delay by
making the history very full, and going back and adding touches at any
point where she thought she had scanted it. After all, it consisted
mainly of fragmentary intimations from Miss Triscoe and of half-uttered
questions which her own art now built into a coherent statement.

March could not find that the general had much resented Burnamy's
clandestine visit to Carlsbad when his daughter told him of it, or that
he had done more than make her promise that she would not keep up the
acqua