On that evening the party at Bragton was not a very pleasant one. "No doubt you are intimate with Lady Penwether, Lady Augustus," said Mrs. Morton. Now Lady Penwether was a very fashionable woman whom to know was considered an honour.
"What makes you ask, ma'am?" said Lady Augustus.
"Only as you were taking your daughter to her brother's house, and as he is a bachelor."
"My dear Mrs. Morton, really you may leave me to take care of myself and of my daughter too. You have lived so much out of the world for the last thirty years that it is quite amusing."
"There are some persons' worlds that it is a great deal better for a lady to be out of," said Mrs. Morton. Then Lady Augustus put up her hands, and turned round, and affected to laugh, of all which things Mr. Gotobed, who was studying English society, made notes in his own mind.
"What sort of position does that man Goarly occupy here?" the Senator asked immediately after dinner.
"Every man created holds some position as I take it. The land is his own."
"And yet he seems to be in the lowest depth of poverty and ignorance."
"Of course he mismanages his property and probably drinks."
"I dare say, Mr. Morton. He is proud of his rights, and talked of his father and his grandfather, and yet I doubt whether you would find a man so squalid and so ignorant in all the States. I suppose he is injured by having a lord so near him."
"Quite the contrary if he would be amenable."
"You mean if he would be a creature of the lord's. And why was that other man so uncivil to me;--the man who was the lord's gamekeeper?"
"Because you went there as a friend of Goarly."
"And that's his idea of English fair play?" asked the Senator with a jeer.
"The truth is, Mr. Gotobed," said Morton endeavouring to explain it all, "you see a part only and not the whole. That man Goarly is a rascal."
"So everybody says on the lord's side. But before I'm done I'll find out what people say on the other side. I can see that he is ignorant and squalid; but that very probably is the lord's fault. It may be that he is a rascal and that the lord is to blame for that too. But if the lord's pheasants have eaten up Goarly's corn, the lord ought to pay for the corn whether Goarly be a rascal or not." Then John Morton made up his mind that he would never ask another American Senator to his house.