‘Ah, I know well enough,’ Tom Dupuy answered, with a curious leer of unintelligent cunning. ‘I know the ways and the habits of the women. They go away over there to England; they get themselves crammed with French and German, and music and drawing, and all kinds of unnecessary accomplishments. They pick up a lot of nonsensical new-fangled notions about Am I not a Man and a Brother? and all that kind of humbug. They think an awful lot of themselves because they can play and sing and gabble Italian. And they despise us West Indians, gentlemen and planters, because we can’t parley-voo all their precious foreign lingoes, and don’t know as much as they do about who composed _Yankee Doodle_. I know them—I know them; I know their ways and their manners. Culture they call it. I call it a precious lot of trumpery nonsense. Why, Mr Hawthorn, I assure you I’ve known some of these fine new-fangled English-taught young women who’d sooner talk to a coloured doctor, as black as a common nigger almost, just because he’d been educated at Oxford, or Edinburgh, or somewhere, than to me myself, the tenth Dupuy in lineal succession at Pimento Valley.’ ‘Indeed,’ Mr Hawthorn answered innocently—no other alternative phrase committing him, as he thought, to so small an opinion on the merits of the question.—‘But do you know, Mr Tom, I don’t believe any person of the Dupuy blood is very likely to take up with these strange modern English heresies that so much surprise you.’ ‘Quite true, sir,’ Mr Dupuy the elder answered with prompt self-satisfaction, mistaking his host’s delicate tone of covert satire for the voice of hearty concurrence and full approval. ‘You’re quite right there, Mr Hawthorn, I’m certain. No born Dupuy of Orange Grove would ever be taken in by any of that silly clap-trap humanitarian rubbish. No foolish Exeter Hall nonsense pertains to the fighting Dupuys, sir, I can assure you—root and branch, not a single ounce of it. It isn’t in them, Mr Hawthorn—it isn’t in them.’ ‘So I think,’ Mr Hawthorn answered quietly. ‘I quite agree with you—it isn’t in them.’ As he spoke, a negro servant, neatly dressed in a cool white linen livery, entered the piazza with a small budget of letters on an old-fashioned Spanish silver salver. Mr Hawthorn took them up eagerly. ‘The English mail!’ he said with an apologetic look towards his two guests. ‘You’ll excuse my just glancing through them, Mr Dupuy, won’t you? I can never rest, the moment the mail’s in, until I know that my dear boy in England is still really well and happy.’ Mr Dupuy nodded assent with a condescending smile; and the master of Agualta broke open his son’s envelope with a little eager hasty flutter. He ran his eye hurriedly down the first page; and then, with a sudden cry, he laid down the letter rapidly on the table, and called out aloud: ‘Mary, Mary!’