“Ah, you _must_ have been getting it!” cried his friend. “I don’t see anything delightful in my disagreeing with Mrs. Westgate,” said Percy Beaumont. “Well, I do!” Mrs. Westgate declared as she turned again to her sister. “You know you’ve to go to town. There must be something at the door for you. You had better take Lord Lambeth.” Mr. Beaumont, at this point, looked straight at his comrade, trying to catch his eye. But Lord Lambeth wouldn’t look at him; his own eyes were better occupied. “I shall be very happy”—Bessie Alden rose straight to their hostess’s suggestion. “I’m only going to some shops. But I’ll drive you about and show you the place.” “An American woman who respects herself,” said Mrs. Westgate, turning to the elder man with her bright expository air, “must buy something every day of her life. If she can’t do it herself she must send out some member of her family for the purpose. So Bessie goes forth to fulfil my mission.” The girl had walked away with Lord Lambeth by her side, to whom she was talking still; and Percy Beaumont watched them as they passed toward the house. “She fulfils her own mission,” he presently said; “that of being very attractive.” But even here Mrs. Westgate discriminated. “I don’t know that I should precisely say attractive. She’s not so much that as she’s charming when you really know her. She’s very shy.” “Oh indeed?” said Percy Beaumont with evident wonder. And then as if to alternate with a certain grace the note of scepticism: “I guess your shyness, in that case, is different from ours.” “Everything of ours is different from yours,” Mrs. Westgate instantly returned. “But my poor sister’s given over, I hold, to a fine Boston _gaucherie_ that has rubbed off on her by being there so much. She’s a dear good girl, however; she’s a charming type of girl. She is not in the least a flirt; that isn’t at all her line; she doesn’t know the alphabet of any such vulgarity. She’s very simple, very serious, very _true_. She has lived, however, rather too much in Boston with another sister of mine, the eldest of us, who married a Bostonian. Bessie’s very cultivated, not at all like me—I’m not in the least cultivated and am called so only by those who don’t know what true culture is. But Bessie does; she has studied Greek; she has read everything; she’s what they call in Boston ‘thoughtful.’” “Ah well, it only depends on what one thinks _about_,” said Mr. Beaumont, who appeared to find her zeal for distinctions catching. “I really believe,” Mrs. Westgate pursued, “that the most charming girl in the world is a Boston superstructure on a New York _fond_, or perhaps a New York superstructure on a Boston _fond_. At any rate it’s the mixture,” she declared, continuing to supply her guest with information and to do him the honours of the American world with a zeal that left nothing to be desired.