ample of your American cousins, who, take 'em by
and large, are quite as refined as your English women, and enough sight
better informed about everything. Why, only t'other day one of 'em asked
me what language was generally spoken in New York city, and didn't a
school-girl from Edinburgh ask Gusty if the people out West were not all
heathens, and if Chicago was near Boston! I tell you, ladies, folks who
live in glass houses should not throw stones. You are well enough, and
nice enough, and on _voices_ you beat us all holler, for 'tis a fact
that most of us pitch ours too high and talk through our noses awful,
and maybe you'd do that too, if you lived in our beastly climate, but as
a rule you have not an atom more learning or refinement at heart than
we."

Thus speaking, she sailed from the room with an air which would have
befitted a grand duchess, leaving her astonished auditors to look at
each other a moment in silence, and then to express themselves fully and
freely and unreservedly with regard to American effrontery, American
manners, and American slang, as represented by Mrs. Rossiter-Browne.

It was a day or two after this that the French tea was served in the
Stoneleigh garden, with strawberries and cream and sponge cakes, and
Daisy did the honors as hostess admirably, and Mrs. Rossiter-Browne,
resplendent in garnet satin and diamonds, sat in a covered garden-chair
and noted everything with a view to repeat it sometime in the garden of
her country house at home. "She'd show 'em what was what," she thought.
"She'd Let 'em know that she had traveled and had been invited out among
the gentry," for such she believed Daisy to be, and she anticipated with
a great deal of complacency the sensation which that airy, graceful,
woman would create in Ridgeville, the little place a mile or more from
Allington, where her husband's farm was situated, and where stood the
once old-fashioned house, but now very pretentious residence, which she
called the Ridge House. She was going there direct after reaching New
York, and thither numerous boxes had preceded her, containing pictures
and statuary and other trophies of her travels abroad, and Daisy, whose
exquisite taste she knew and appreciated, was to help her arrange the
new things, and then "she'd give a smasher of a party," she said, as she
sat in her garden-chair and talked of the surprise and happiness in
store for the _Ridgevillians_ when she issued cards for her garden
par