r her, when Aunt Julia came, by
the prompt hostility that declared itself between her and Miss Buckston.
Aunt Julia was not a person to allow a steam-roller to pass over her
without protest, and Althea felt that she herself had been cowardly when
she saw how Aunt Julia resented, for them both, Miss Buckston's methods.
Miss Buckston had a manner of saying rude things in sincere
unconsciousness that they could offend anybody. She herself did not take
offence easily; she was, as she would have said, 'tough.' But Mrs.
Pepperell had all the sensitiveness--for herself and for others--of her
race, the British race, highly strung with several centuries of
transplantation to an electric climate. If she was rude it was never
unconsciously so. After her first talk with Miss Buckston, in which the
latter, as was her wont, told her a number of unpleasant facts about
America and the Americans, Mrs. Pepperell said to her niece, 'What an
intolerable woman!'

'She doesn't mean it,' said Althea feebly.

'Perhaps not,' said Aunt Julia; 'but I intend that she shall see what I
mean.'

Althea's feeling was of mingled discomfort and satisfaction. Her
sympathies were with Aunt Julia, yet she felt a little guilty towards
Miss Buckston, for whom her affection was indeed wavering. Inner loyalty
having failed she did not wish outer loyalty to be suspected, and in all
the combats that took place she kept in the background and only hoped to
see Aunt Julia worst Miss Buckston. But the trouble was that Aunt Julia
never did worst her. Even when, passing beyond the bounds of what she
considered decency, she became nearly as outspoken as Miss Buckston,
that lady maintained her air of cheerful yet impatient tolerance. She
continued to tell them that the American wife and mother was the most
narrow, the most selfish, the most complacent of all wives and mothers;
and, indeed, to Miss Buckston's vigorous virginity, all wives and
mothers, though sociologically necessary, belonged to a slightly
inferior, more rudimentary species. The American variety, she said, were
immersed in mere domesticity or social schemes and squabbles. 'Oh, they
talked. I never heard so much talk in all my life as when I was over
there,' said Miss Buckston; 'but I couldn't see that they got anything
done with it. They had debates about health, and yet one could hardly
for love or money get a window open in a train; and they had debates on
the ethics of citizenship, and yet you are g