“But—Gwendolen! I don’t know how I am ever going to stand that name. Why, a body wouldn’t _know_ Sally Sellers in it. It’s too large for her; kind of like a cherub in an ulster, and it’s a most outlandish sort of a name, anyway, to my mind.” “You’ll not hear her find fault with it, my lady.” “That’s a true word. She takes to any kind of romantic rubbish like she was born to it. She never got it from me, that’s sure. And sending her to that silly college hasn’t helped the matter any—just the other way.” “Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and most aristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country. Under no circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich and fashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called American nobility. Castellated college-buildings—towers and turrets and an imitation moat—and everything about the place named out of Sir Walter Scott’s books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all the richest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses, with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and top-boots, and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-three feet behind them—” “And they don’t learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a single blessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness. But send for the Lady Gwendolen—do; for I reckon the peerage regulations require that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion and mourn for those Arkansas blatherskites she’s lost.” “My darling! Blatherskites? Remember—_noblesse oblige_.” “There, there—talk to me in your own tongue, Ross—you don’t know any other, and you only botch it when you try. Oh, don’t stare—it was a slip, and no crime; customs of a life-time can’t be dropped in a second. Ross_more_—there, now, be appeased, and go along with you and attend to Gwendolen. Are you going to write, Washington?—or telegraph?” “He will telegraph, dear.” “I thought as much,” my lady muttered, as she left the room. “Wants it so the address will have to appear on the envelop. It will just make a fool of that child. She’ll get it, of course, for if there are any other Sellerses there they’ll not be able to claim it. And just leave her alone to show it around and make the most of it. Well, maybe she’s forgivable for that. She’s so poor and they’re so rich, of course she’s had her share of snubs from the livery-flunkey sort, and I reckon it’s only human to want to get even.”