Читать книгу Maid Marian, and Other Stories онлайн

20 страница из 59

"Ah!" said Marian, with beautiful condescension, "although our ways differ, I make no doubt that humble folk have as many sterling virtues as the nobility and gentry."

"Yes," said Mrs. Van Tromp, thinking her new acquaintance's remark included herself, Mrs. Van Tromp, among the gentry anyhow. "Of course we are very new, and society, outside of a small set in New York and a few families at Newport, is crude. Fortunately, here we have an old Knickerbocker circle—"

"Knicker—what?" asked Lady Marian, somewhat saucily.

"Bocker," answered Mrs. Van Tromp, affably. "Knickerbocker: The old Dutch families. We try to keep to ourselves as much as possible—and we have the AssociationofcolonialdamesthedaughtersoftheAmericanrevolution—" Mrs. Van Tromp rattled this and several other names off volubly, although she had heretofore maintained a carefully acquired English slowness of speech, and wound up with—

"But unluckily, we have no hereditary nobility."

"Yet," responded Marian, "you do ape us wonderfully well. I have not seen many mercers' wives who looked the noble dame like you."