“Indeed, yes. In Boston even the lower classes speak English.”
“You don’t say.” Frothingham’s drawl was calm; he put upon his eyeglass the burden of looking astonished interest.
“It must fret your nerves to listen to the speech here,” continued Mrs. Staunton. “It’s a dialect as harsh and vulgar--as most of the voices.”
“It will be a great pleasure to hear the language spoken as it is at home--though I can’t say that I mind it here. Yes--I shall be glad to see Boston.”
Mrs. Staunton lifted her eyebrows and looked politely amused. “But _we_ don’t speak as you speak in England. I didn’t say _that_.”
“Oh--I thought you were by way of saying they spoke English at Boston.”
“So I did. I meant that we speak correctly. You English speak very incorrectly. Your upper class is even more slovenly in that respect than your middle class.”
Frothingham looked interest and inquiry. “Ah--yes--quite so,” he said. “I believe we do let our middle-class look after all that sort of thing. It saves us a lot of bother.”
“I’m glad you admit the truth.” Mrs. Staunton looked gracious and triumphant. “Last winter we had the president of one of the colleges at Oxford with us--a very narrow man.”
“Frightful persons, all that sort, _I_ think,” said Frothingham.
“I’m not astonished that you think so,” replied Mrs. Staunton. “He--it was Mr. Stebbins--scoffed at the idea that Boston spoke English. He insisted that whatever your upper class speaks is English, that they have the right to determine the language.”
That was Frothingham’s own notion, but he gave no sign. “Stebbins is a hideous old jabberwock,” he said, glad that the orchestra was beginning.
He had accidentally, but naturally, stumbled into the road to Mrs. Staunton’s good graces. She wanted acquiescent listeners only; he disliked talking and abhorred argument. She was living at the Waldorf also, and this gave him his opportunity. She found him most agreeable. He had the great advantage of being free all day, while her New York men friends were at work then--and she did not like women. She insisted it was only the New York woman--“so trivial, so childish in her tastes for show and for farcical amusements”--that she did not like; but the fact was that she did not like any women anywhere. Nominally, she was in New York to visit her sister, Mrs. Findlay, but she rarely saw her. “I can’t endure staying in Henrietta’s house,” she explained to Frothingham. “She has fallen from grace. If anything, she out-Herods the New York women--always the way with renegades. And she lets her housekeeper and her butler run her household--dust everywhere, things going to ruin, the servants often drunk. If I were in the house I could not be silent; so I stay at a hotel when I make my annual visit to her.”