“Do you know,” he said to her, “you don’t suggest an American girl at all--that is, you do and you don’t. You women over here are cleverer than ours, but a good many of ’em lack a certain something--a--I don’t know just what to call it. It seems to me that--well, they are ladies, of course. But many of ’em--not all--but a great many of those I’ve chanced to meet--make me feel as if they were not exactly sure of themselves, as if they were trying to live up to something they’d read about or seen somewhere. I don’t know that I make myself clear.”
“Perfectly,” replied Nelly. “You mean that they act as if they weren’t satisfied with being the kind of lady they were born, and are trying to be some other kind--and don’t succeed at it especially well.”
“Exactly,” said Frothingham. “I feel like saying to them, ‘Oh, come now, chuck it, won’t you, and let’s see what you’re really like.’ But you--you remind me of our women, except that they’re so ghastly dull--the most of ’em. Gad, they sit about in the country until they’re feeble-minded. After a certain age, about all there is left of ’em is the match-making instinct. You’d understand if you’d been over there.”
“I have been there,” answered Nelly. “I spent more than a year in Europe--nearly half of it in your country. I liked it, but--well, one likes one’s own country best, of course.”
“I thought you American women preferred the other side.”
“Oh, a few of us do--those who aren’t happy unless they have somebody bowing and scraping to them or are bowing and scraping to somebody. You know, the poor we have always with us--the poor in spirit as well as the other kind of poor.”
Before they had talked an hour Frothingham felt that the outlook for his campaign in the Barney house was not promising. Nelly was frank and friendly, and he saw that she liked him. But there was something in her atmosphere which made him know that she cared little for the things which were everything to him and which must be everything to the woman he might hope to win. He feared that she was not for him. “She ain’t in my class--or perhaps I’d better say, I ain’t in hers.”
When Wickham came, at half-past ten, she left them. After suppressing yawns for fifteen minutes he said: “I’m off to bed. I was at a dance last night and owe myself five hours sleep. You see, father and I get up at half-past six. We have to be at the store at eight.”