“Oh, there are a great many words in the _Bible_ you can't use,” returned her aunt. “No, I don't look ill now, and I'm worlds better. But I couldn't live a year in any other climate, I suppose. You seem to take after your mother's side. Well, as I was saying, the European ways didn't come natural to me, at all. I used to have a great deal of gayety when I was a girl, and I liked beaux and attentions; and I had very free ways. I couldn't get their stiffness here for years and years, and all through my widowhood it was one wretched failure with me. Do what I would, I was always violating the most essential rules, and the worst of it was that it only seemed to make me the more popular. I do believe it was nothing but my rowdiness that attracted Mr. Erwin; but I determined when I had got an Englishman I would make one bold strike for the proprieties, and have them, or die in the attempt. I determined that no Englishwoman I ever saw should outdo me in strict conformity to all the usages of European society. So I cut myself off from all the Americans, and went with nobody but the English.” “Do you like them better?” asked Lydia, with the blunt, child-like directness that had already more than once startled her aunt. “_Like_ them! I detest them! If Mr. Erwin were a real Englishman, I think I should go crazy; but he's been so little in his own country--all his life in India, nearly, and the rest on the Continent,--that he's quite human; and no American husband was ever more patient and indulgent; and _that_'s saying a good deal. He would be glad to have nothing but Americans around; he has an enthusiasm for them,--or for what he supposes they are. Like the English! You ought to have heard them during our war; it would have made your blood boil! And then how they came crawling round after it was all over, and trying to pet us up! Ugh!” “If you feel so about them,” said Lydia, as before, “why do you want to go with them so much?”