the difference between English and American manners: in New York people
always asked the arriving stranger the first thing about the steamer and
the hotel. Mr. Wendover appeared greatly impressed with Lady Davenant's
antiquity, though he confessed to his companion on a subsequent occasion
that he thought her a little flippant, a little frivolous even for her
years. 'Oh yes,' said the girl, on that occasion, 'I have no doubt that
you considered she talked too much, for one so old. In America old
ladies sit silent and listen to the young.' Mr. Wendover stared a little
and replied to this that with her--with Laura Wing--it was impossible to
tell which side she was on, the American or the English: sometimes she
seemed to take one, sometimes the other. At any rate, he added, smiling,
with regard to the other great division it was easy to see--she was on
the side of the old. 'Of course I am,' she said; 'when one _is_ old!'
And then he inquired, according to his wont, if she were thought so in
England; to which she answered that it was England that had made her so.

Lady Davenant's bright drawing-room was filled with mementoes and
especially with a collection of portraits of distinguished people,
mainly fine old prints with signatures, an array of precious autographs.
'Oh, it's a cemetery,' she said, when the young man asked her some
question about one of the pictures; 'they are my contemporaries, they
are all dead and those things are the tombstones, with the inscriptions.
I'm the grave-digger, I look after the place and try to keep it a little
tidy. I have dug my own little hole,' she went on, to Laura, 'and when
you are sent for you must come and put me in.' This evocation of
mortality led Mr. Wendover to ask her if she had known Charles Lamb; at
which she stared for an instant, replying: 'Dear me, no--one didn't meet
him.'

'Oh, I meant to say Lord Byron,' said Mr. Wendover.

'Bless me, yes; I was in love with him. But he didn't notice me,
fortunately--we were so many. He was very nice-looking but he was very
vulgar.' Lady Davenant talked to Laura as if Mr. Wendover had not been
there; or rather as if his interests and knowledge were identical with
hers. Before they went away the young man asked her if she had known
Garrick and she replied: 'Oh, dear, no, we didn't have them in our
houses, in those days.'

'He must have been dead long before you were born!' Laura exclaimed.

'I daresay; but one used to hear of him.'