Lady Barbarina Part 36

"I always feel so sorry for people who come up to town and go to live in those dens," continued the young man. "They eat nothing but filth."

"Oh I say!" cried Willie Woodley.

"Well, and how do you like London, Miss Alden?" Lord Lambeth asked, unperturbed by this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

The girl was prompt. "I think it grand."

"My sister likes it, in spite of the 'filth'!" Mrs. Westgate recorded.

"I hope then you're going to stop a long time."

"As long as I can," Bessie replied.

"And where's wonderful Mr. Westgate?" asked Lord Lambeth of this gentleman's wife.

"He's where he always is-in that tiresome New York."

"He must have staying power," said the young man.

She appeared to consider. "Well, he stays ahead of every one else."

Lord Lambeth sat nearly an hour with his American friends; but it is not our purpose to relate their conversation in full. He addressed a great many remarks to the younger lady and finally turned toward her altogether, while Willie Woodley wasted a certain amount of effort to regale Mrs. Westgate. Bessie herself was sparing of effusion; she thought, on her guard, of what her sister had said to her at luncheon.

Little by little, however, she interested herself again in her English friend very much as she had done at Newport; only it seemed to her he might here become more interesting. He would be an unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness, the picturesqueness of England; of all of which things poor Bessie Alden, like most familiars of the overciphered _tabula rasa_, was terribly at the mercy.

"I've often wished I were back at Newport," the young man candidly stated. "Those days I spent at your sister's were awfully jolly."

"We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father's better."

"Oh dear yes. When I got to England the old humbug was out grouse-shooting. It was what you call in America a gigantic fraud. My mother had got nervous. My three weeks at Newport seemed a happy dream."

"America certainly is very different from England," said Bessie.

"I hope you like England better, eh?" he returned almost persuasively.

"No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country."

He turned his cheerful brown eyes on her. "You mean it's a matter of course?"

"If I were English," said Bessie, "it would certainly seem to me a matter of course that every one should be a good patriot."

"Oh dear, yes; patriotism's everything." He appeared not quite to follow, but was clearly contented. "Now what are you going to do here?"

"On Thursday I'm going to the Tower."

"The Tower?"

"The Tower of London. Did you never hear of it?"

"Oh yes, I've been there," said Lord Lambeth. "I was taken there by my governess when I was six years old. It's a rum idea your going there."

"Do give me a few more rum ideas then. I want to see everything of that sort. I'm going to Hampton Court and to Windsor and to the Dulwich Gallery."

He seemed greatly amused. "I wonder you don't go to Rosherville Gardens."

Bessie yearned. "Are they interesting?"

"Oh wonderful!"

"Are they weirdly old? That's all I care for," she said.

"They're tremendously old; they're all falling to ruins."

The girl rose to it. "I think there's nothing so charming as an old ruinous garden. We must certainly go there."

Her friend broke out into mirth. "I say, Woodley, here's Miss Alden wants to go down to Rosherville Gardens! Hang it, they _are_ 'weird'!"

Willie Woodley looked a little blank; he was caught in the fact of ignorance of an apparently conspicuous feature of London life. But in a moment he turned it off. "Very well," he said, "I'll write for a permit."

Lord Lambeth's exhilaration increased. "'Gad, I believe that, to get your money's worth over here, you Americans would go anywhere!"

"We wish to go to Parliament," said Bessie. "That's one of the first things."

"Ah, it would bore you to death!" he returned.

"We wish to hear you speak."

"I never speak-except to young ladies."

She looked at him from under the shade of her parasol. "You're very strange," she then quietly concluded. "I don't think I approve of you."

"Ah, now don't be severe, Miss Alden!" he cried with the note of sincerity. "Please don't be severe. I want you to like me-awfully."

"To like you awfully? You mustn't laugh at me then when I make mistakes.

I regard it as my right-as a free-born American-to make as many mistakes as I choose."

"Upon my word I didn't laugh at you," the young man pleaded.

"And not only that," Bessie went on; "but I hold that all my mistakes should be set down to my credit. You must think the better of me for them."

"I can't think better of you than I do," he declared.

Again, shadily, she took him in. "You certainly speak very well to young ladies. But why don't you address the House?-isn't that what they call it?"

"Because I've nothing to say."

"Haven't you a great position?" she demanded.

He looked a moment at the back of his glove. "I'll set that down as one of your mistakes-to your credit." And as if he disliked talking about his position he changed the subject. "I wish you'd let me go with you to the Tower and to Hampton Court and to all those other places."