"Paul," his sister asked him, "how do you like America?"
"_America?_" he repeated, and, although he said no more, she knew by his quizzical drawl what he meant.
"Absurd," she laughed. "You have only been here a week, and except for ridiculously caddying a couple of times for John at the Golf Club, you have not been out of the house."
"In which case, how could I fail to like it?" he said, with mock politeness. "You've kept me company! _You_ don't seem to be tempted to explore the old scenes any more than I do! Perhaps, like me, you're afraid of the shock. You know how luxurious I am. If it were not for the extremely swell gentleman and lady servants, I should feel very much at ease." He had not put down his book; he still smoked and appeared to be reading what he said from it. "I was most amused the other day as I stood on the piazza; did John tell you? I saw going around the road two very attractive-looking girls--they recalled the Gibson pictures as much as anything else. They wore, of course, short skirts and those bodices that you see everywhere. They had a bicycle, each of them, and they were walking along, their arms around each other's waists. I said to John: 'By Jove, what a stunning pair of girls! I should like to know them.' And he said: 'They are living in the same house with you, my dear fellow--_they are my cook and my laundress_.'"
Mrs. Bellamy laughed appreciatively. "Tell me, Paul, how _does_ America strike you?"
McAllister reluctantly laid his book down, crossed his legs and prepared to answer.
"I've been out more often than you think. I took a turtle view of the town; I mean I sauntered up and down it and out of it, and it gave me as complete a sensation as I have had in twenty-four years. A better sensation, _ma chère_, and I am not likely to have another."
Mrs. Bellamy listened, as she always did when her brother gave himself the trouble to speak more than one sentence at a time to any woman with whom he was not in love.
"It is all new-born, honorable, progressive and decent. Everybody seems to have a certain disdain for me. I believe it is because, if you will permit me to say so, I dress so well."
"Not that _they_ do not dress well! They do--astoundingly well; but they all dress alike, and you cannot tell, as in the case of your own servant, a lady from her cook, or a butcher boy on a holiday from the millionaire's son, if he happens to come through town on foot or in a motor. Let's agree, then, that I do look different. 'The drug-store man'--that's what you call him, isn't it?--looked at me as if he hated me and my clothes when he gave me some calisaya. He thought I was a foreigner; they don't like foreigners. If anything could put me on the same footing with my country people, this town street did, as far as it was able. By the time I got to the grocery I had forgotten that I had not seen America for thirty years, and that I was so different. Nothing remained but that _country school feeling_, that boy feeling. If you ask what I mean: There was a barrel of apples outside of the grocer's door. I wanted to sneak one! I would have given fifty dollars for a glass of cider--for anything, in short, to keep up the game. I went in and asked him if he had such a thing as 'sarsaparilla.' He had it, and, in spite of my 'difference,' he pulled his cork and I drank the whole glass of that stuff. Pah! don't ask me about it! It was all right, I don't doubt; but when I left the corner and started up the hill, that wonderful sentimental feeling had entirely left me! There was only a wretched nausea--a complete sense of how far away I had gone from the simplicity of the whole thing, and I don't say that I congratulated myself. Now, will you let me read, Agnes?"