self-asserting."

"But you are a little that way given, Miss Spalding."

"Because we are always called upon to answer accusations against
us, expressed or unexpressed. We don't think ourselves a bit better
than you; or, if the truth were known, half as good. We are always
struggling to be as polished and easy as the French, or as sensible
and dignified as the English; but when our defects are thrown in our
teeth--"

"Who throws them in your teeth, Miss Spalding?"

"You look it,--all of you,--if you do not speak it out. You do assume
a superiority, Mr. Glascock; and that we cannot endure."

"I do not feel that I assume anything," said Mr. Glascock, meekly.

"If three gentlemen be together, an Englishman, a Frenchman, and an
American, is not the American obliged to be on his mettle to prove
that he is somebody among the three? I admit that he is always
claiming to be the first; but he does so only that he may not be too
evidently the last. If you knew us, Mr. Glascock, you would find us
to be very mild, and humble and nice, and good, and clever, and kind,
and charitable, and beautiful,--in short, the finest people that have
as yet been created on the broad face of God's smiling earth." These
last words she pronounced with a nasal twang, and in a tone of voice
which almost seemed to him to be a direct mimicry of the American
Minister. The upshot of the conversation, however, was that the
disgust against Americans which, to a certain degree, had been
excited in Mr. Glascock's mind by the united efforts of Mr. Spalding
and the poetess, had been almost entirely dispelled. From all of
which the reader ought to understand that Miss Olivia Spalding was a
very clever young woman.

But nevertheless Mr. Glascock had not quite made up his mind to ask
the elder sister to be his wife. He was one of those men to whom
love-making does not come very easy, although he was never so much at
his ease as when he was in company with ladies. He was sorely in want
of a wife, but he was aware that at different periods during the last
fifteen years he had been angled for as a fish. Mothers in England
had tried to catch him, and of such mothers he had come to have the
strongest possible detestation. He had seen the hooks,--or perhaps
had fancied that he saw them when they were not there. Lady Janes and
Lady Sarahs had been hard upon him, till he learned to buckle himself
into triple armour when he went amongst them, and yet he wanted
a wi