"My! what a beautiful motor! Why, if it isn't cunning! Silas and I got here just half an hour ago, and your servants brought us tea right away out on the lawn, and made us ever so much at home. But, as I'm for ever saying to everybody, 'Catherine is just perfect, and everything she has is just perfect--her husband, her servants, her motor-car, and her crackers.' You should have seen Silas tackle the crackers! Don't I tell everybody so, Silas?"
When Theodosia was present there was never any fear of awkward silences--awkward speeches were the only possibilities; but she covered up every awkward speech so quickly with another that none of them mattered much. She was usually talking when somebody else was talking, and always when nobody else was.
"Don't you tell everybody what, Theodosia?" inquired her husband.
"Why, that Catherine is just perfect. But Englishmen are so perfect, too, that I guess it's right for perfect American girls to marry them. Why, your ball the other night! I thought I knew something about balls, but Catherine's ahead of me there, though we've had some bright evenings in New York. I guess you're proud of your wife, Lord Thurso, and I guess she's proud of you."
This was all very pleasant, and it was not only a salute-explosion of geniality on the part of Theodosia; she exploded all the time like a quick-firing gun. She was never sick or sorry, or tired or silent; she was always bright, and a contemplative mind might seriously wonder whether anything known to occur in this uncertain world would make her stop talking. She talked all the time that she was in a dentist's chair, even though her speech was impeded by pads and gags and creosote; and she had once talked without intermission through a railway accident, not even stopping to scream. At intervals the voice of her husband said "Theodosia!" like a clock striking, but the ticking went on all the same.
"And if that isn't the cunningest yew-hedge I ever saw," she said, "with a door cut right through the middle of it as if it was a wall; and there's the river just beyond with the boats, like people on the side-walk. Lord Thurso, can you see the river from where you are sitting? Silas, change places with Lord Thurso, because I want him to see the river through the door in the yew-hedge. My! look at that bug--what do you call it? Oh yes, butterfly--sitting right here on the arm of my chair! Isn't it tame! The bugs in America aren't half so tame as that: they hustle more; but I think it's English not to hustle so much. You eat your tea without hustling, too, Lord Thurso. I call that the true British tranquillity, and I just adore it. Don't I, Silas?"