"We've got to do as the other capitals do," said I. "Naturally, as we get more and more ambassadors, and a bigger army, and the President more powerful, we become like the European courts. And the President is simply making a change abruptly that'd have to come gradually anyhow."
Her eyes began to twinkle. "First thing you know, the country'll turn loose a herd of steers from the prairies in this town, and--But, long as it's here, I suppose I've got to abide by it. So I'll do whatever you say. It'll be a poor do, without my trying to find fault."
And she's being as good as her word. She makes me tell her exactly what to do. She is so beautifully simple and ladylike in her frank confessions of her ignorance--just as the Queen of England would be if she were to land on the planet Mars and have to learn the ways--the surface ways, I mean. I've no doubt that outside of a few frills which silly people make a great fuss about, a lady is a lady from one end of the universe to the other.
I'm making the rounds of my friends with Mrs. Burke in this period of waiting for the season to begin. And she sits mum and keeps her eyes moving. She's rapidly picking up the right way to say things--that is, the self-assurance to say things in her own way. I took her among my friends first because I wanted her to realize that I was absolutely right in urging her to naturalness. There are so many in the different sets she'll be brought into contact with who are ludicrously self-conscious. Certainly, there's much truth in what she says about the new order. We Americans don't do the European sort of thing well, and, while the old way wasn't pretty to look at it, it was--it was our own. However, I'm merely a social secretary, dealing with what is, and not bothering my head about what ought to be. And as for the Burkes, they're here to take advantage of what is, not to revolutionize things.
Mr. Burke himself was the next member of the family at whom I got a chance with my great plans. When he had got it all out of me he began to pace up and down the floor, pulling at his whiskers, and evidently thinking. Finally he looked at me in a kindly, sharp way, and, in a voice I recognized at once as the voice of the Thomas Burke who had been able to pile up a fortune and buy into the Senate, said: