with the fact that the English gentleman
and the American differ not only in species, but in genus. I'd go so far
as to say that they've got to be recognized by different sets of
faculties. You get at your man by the eye and the ear; we have to use a
subtler apparatus. If we didn't we should let a good many go uncounted.
Some of our finest are even more uncouth with their consonants than good
friend Davenant. They'd drop right out of your list, but they take a
high place in ours. To try to discern one by the methods created for the
other is like what George Eliot says of putting on spectacles to detect
odors. Ignorance of this basic social fact on both sides has given rise
to much international misjudgment. See?"

"Can't say that I do."

"No, you wouldn't. But until you do you won't understand a big simple
type--"

"I don't care a hang about his big simple type. What I want to know is
how to take him. Is he a confounded sentimentalist?--or is he still
putting up a bluff?"

"What difference does it make to you?"

"If he's putting up a bluff, he's waiting out there at Michigan for me
to call it. If he's working the sentimental racket, then I've got to be
the beneficiary of his beastly good-will."

"If he's putting up a bluff, you can fix him by not calling it at all;
and as for his beastly good-will, well, he's a beneficiary of it, too."

"How so?"

"Because beastly good-will is a thing that cuts both ways. He'll get as
much out of it as you."

"That's all very fine--"

"It's very fine, indeed, for him. We've an old saying in these parts: By
the Street called Straight we come to the House called Beautiful. It's
one of those fanciful saws of which the only justification is that it
works. Any one can test the truth of it by taking the highway. Well,
friend Davenant is taking it. He'll reach the House called Beautiful as
straight as a die. Don't you fret about that. You'll owe him nothing in
the long run, because he'll get all the reward he's entitled to. When's
the wedding? Fixed the date yet?"

"Not going to fix one," Ashley explained, moodily. "One of these days,
when everything is settled at Tory Hill and the sale is over, we shall
walk off to the church and get married. That seems to be the best way,
as matters stand."

"It's a very sensible way at all times. And I hear you're carrying Henry
off with you to England."

Ashley shrugged his shoulders. "Going the whole hog. What? Had to make
the offer. Ol