I could not help observing that for quite five minutes
Mr. Mafferton had made no effort to overhear the conversation between
Mr. Dod and Miss Portheris. It was a trifle, but life is made up of
little things.
"I don't believe we adorn our conversation with proverbs in America as
much as we did," I continued. "I guess it takes too long. If you make
use of a proverb you see, you've got to allow for reflection first, and
reflection afterwards, and a sigh, and very few of us have time for
that. It is one of our disadvantages."
Mr. Mafferton heard me with attention.
"Really!" he said in quite his old manner when we used to discuss
Presidential elections and peanuts and other features of life in my
republic. "That is a fact of some interest--but I see you cling to one
little Americanism, Miss Wick. Do you remember"--he actually looked
arch--"once assuring me that you intended to abandon the verb to
'guess'?"
"I don't know why we should leave all the good words to Shakespeare," I
said, "but I was under a great many hallucinations about the American
language in England, and I daresay I did.
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