Lady Betty Across the WaterWilliamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
General
Lady Betty Across the Water
Williamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
British -- United States -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair, she sat
on a throne of ducal luggage, looking queenly in an elegant white shirt
waist, built mostly of holes and eminently suited to her style of
beauty as well as the weather. She also had on a picture hat, which was
superfluous as she would have been a picture without it, and below the
waist she was tailor made."
"I think it's most insulting!" I broke in. "And I was made at home, all
the way down."
But Sally went on: "I soon found [writes the representative of _The
Flashlight_] that the sister of the Duke of Stanforth, one of Britain's
eligibles, preferred to be addressed by her Front name of Lady Betty.
'I feel more at home,' said she, with a sweet voice, but a pronounced
English accent, 'when I am called Lady Betty. And I want to feel at
home in America, because I expect to be some time with my friend, Mrs.
Stuyvesant-Knox, who will show me society over on this side. I have
heard so much about Newport, don't you know? I fancy it will be too
utterly deevy.'"
"What's deevy?" I demanded with scorn.
"Oh, that's supposed to be what smart Englishwomen say for divine."
"_I_ never heard it," I sneered, "much less said it. I'm sure Mother
would consider it quite profane."
"Well, do be quiet, child, and listen to what _The Flashlight_ says you
said." "'What opinion have you formed of our society women and clubmen,
on board the Willie?' was the next question.
"'I think your ladies are better dressed than ours, and the gentlemen
are just lovely. They don't sit around and wait while we girls amuse
them, they hustle to give us a good time, and they know how to do it. I
shouldn't wonder if I should hate to go home and associate with lords
after being a summer girl in Newport. I don't see now why American
girls go out of their own country to marry.'
"'I suppose we shall be seeing your brother, the Duke, over here before
long?'
"'His Grace may come to fetch me back,' replied her ladyship. 'He has
never been to America, but it is one of the desires of his life to
come, and your American beauties had better look out, for he is a gay
young bachelor, and I shouldn't be surprised if he took a fancy to
carry home a Duchess. Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox will entertain him also, and
maybe he will paint some of America red.'"
"That's all about you, I see," Sally finished up. "The rest is about
Cousin Katherine and me. It says we've come back with a touch of the
Piccadilly accent; and it criticises my nose, and the way Cousin
Katherine puts on her hat. It describes this house all wrong, and says
the Newport cottage 'knocks spots' out of Mrs. Van der Windt's cottage.
It also mentions Cousin Potter, and calls him 'one of our Army Dudes.'
But _we_ don't mind, and you mustn't. Everybody reads _The Flashlight_,
for the sake of the shocks, but nobody believes its flashes."
"Still, you must have said something to the man," remarked Mrs. Ess
Kay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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