of thing I'm accustomed to, don't you know--this idea of one of my
countrywomen coming over just to benefit English relatives! By Jove! I
wouldn't mind undertaking the whole thing for you--it's such a novelty."
He was quite carried away with the idea.
But the two ladies were far from participating in this joyous outlook.
"No," said Mrs. Desborough promptly, "that wouldn't do. You see," she
went on with superb frankness, "that would be just giving ourselves
away, and saying who WE were before we found out what THEY were like.
Mr. Desborough was all right in HIS way, but we don't know anything
about his FOLKS! We ain't here on a mission to improve the Desboroughs,
nor to gather in any 'lost tribes.'"
It was evident that, in spite of the humor of the situation and the
levity of the ladies, there was a characteristic national practicalness
about them, and the consul, with a sigh, at last gave the address of one
or two responsible experts in genealogical inquiry, as he had often
done before. He felt it was impossible to offer any advice to ladies
as thoroughly capable of managing their own affairs as his fair
countrywomen, yet he was not without some curiosity to know the result
of their practical sentimental quest. That he should ever hear of them
again he doubted. He knew that after their first loneliness had worn off
in their gregarious gathering at a London hotel they were not likely to
consort with their own country people, who indeed were apt to fight
shy of one another, and even to indulge in invidious criticism of one
another when admitted in that society to which they were all equally
strangers. So he took leave of them on their way back to London with the
belief that their acquaintance terminated with that brief incident. But
he was mistaken.
In the year following he was spending his autumn vacation at a
country house. It was an historic house, and had always struck him as
being--even in that country of historic seats--a singular example of the
vicissitudes of English manorial estates and the mutations of its
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