By and by he left us alone for a few minutes, while he went to speak to a man who works on the farm. He was going to show us the maple sugar camp when he came back, and we sat on a felled oak and waited, with a smell of clover coming to us on the warm breeze, and the "tinkle, tankle" of cow-bells in the distance. "What an extraordinary man!" I said to Mr. Brett. "You mean because he's a farmer," said he, his eyes laughing. "Well--I suppose I do. But then, of course, he's a gentleman farmer, not an ordinary one at all." "He's a gentleman in the way that all the good people in the country round are gentlefolk, because they're self-respecting and kind-hearted and intelligent. But he comes of generations of workers. They make no pretensions to blue blood, though perhaps they may have some in their veins, and don't think themselves superior socially to their own farm hands--like that one over there. Nor do they consider themselves inferior to anybody. Not that they would think of _asserting_ their claims to equality with your friend Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, for instance. They simply take it for granted that they are the equals of any other American, or for the matter of that, persons of any foreign nations. You will perhaps hear them talking about your king and queen as 'Edward' and 'Alexandra'; but they won't mean the slightest disrespect." "You needn't be afraid I shall misunderstand anything they may do or say," said I. "My ideas about them are beginning to crystallise already, as you thought they would. But I'm wondering at them all, still. They're so utterly new to me, so absolutely different from any types we have or could have at home." "What would your mother the Duchess think of them--now, honour bright? Don't dream you'll hurt my feelings because they're my cousins and we come of the same stock." I thought for a minute, and then I said: