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Page 21
"You want get out?"
"_Oui!_" replied the Misses Bingham with simultaneous dignity, and, as
the guide merely wiped his forehead again, poppa stepped forward. "Can I
assist you?" he said, and the Misses Bingham allowed themselves to be
assisted. They were small ladies, dressed in black pongee silk, with
sloping shoulders, and they each carried a black fan and a brocaded bag
for odds and ends. They were not plain-looking, and yet it was readily
seen why nobody had ever married them; they had that look of the
predestined single state that you sometimes see even among the very well
preserved. One of them had an eye-glass, but it was easy to note even
when she was not wearing it that she was a person of independent income,
of family, and of New York.
"We are quite willing," said the Misses Bingham, "to exchange our seats
in the coach for yours in the special carriage, if that arrangement
suits you."
"_Bon!_" interposed the guide, "and opposite there is one other place if
that fat gentleman will squeeze himself a little--eh?"
"Come along!" said the fat gentleman equably.
"But I couldn't think of depriving you ladies."
"Sir," said one Miss Bingham, "it is no deprivation."
"We should prefer it," added the other Miss Bingham. They spoke with
decision; one saw that they had not reached middle age without knowing
their own minds all the way.
"To tell the truth," added the Miss Bingham without the eye-glass in a
low voice, "we don't think we can stand it."
"I don't precisely take you, madam," said the Senator politely.
"I'm an American," she continued.
Poppa bowed. "I should have known you for a daughter of the Stars and
Stripes anywhere," he said in his most complimentary tone.
Miss Bingham looked disconcerted for an instant and went on. "My great
grandfather was A.D.C. to General Washington. I've got that much reason
to be loyal."
"There couldn't have been many such officers," the Senator agreed.
"But when I go abroad I don't want the whole of the United States to
come with me."
"It takes the gilt off getting back for you?" suggested poppa a little
stiffly.
Miss Bingham failed to take the hint. "We find Europe infested with
Americans," she continued. "It disturbs one's impressions so. And the
travelling American invariably belongs to the very _least_ desirable
class."
"Now I shouldn't have thought so," said the Senator, with intentional
humour. But it was lost upon Miss Bingham.
"Well, if you like them," said the other one, "you'd better go in the
coach."
The Senator lifted his hat. "Madam," he said, "I thank you for giving to
me and mine the privilege of visiting a very questionable scene of the
past in the very best society of the present."
And as the guide was perspiring more and more impatiently, we got in.
For some moments the Senator sat in silence, reflecting upon this
sentiment, with an occasionally heaving breast. Circumstances forbade
his talking about it, but he cast an eye full of criticism upon the
fiacre rolling along far in the rear, and remarked, with a fervor most
unusual, that he hoped they liked our dust. We certainly made a great
deal of it. Momma and I, looking at our fellow travellers, at once
decided that the Misses Bingham had been a little hasty. The fat
gentleman, who wore a straw hat very far back, and meant to enjoy
himself, was certainly our fellow-citizen. So was his wife, and
brother-in-law. So were a bride and bridegroom on the box seat--nothing
less than the best of everything for an American honeymoon--and so was a
solitary man with a short cut bristly beard, a slouch hat, a pink cotton
shirt, and a celluloid collar. But there was an indescribable something
about all the rest that plainly showed they had never voted for a
president or celebrated a Fourth of July. I was still revolving it in my
mind when the fat gentleman, who had been thinking of the same thing,
said to his neighbour on the other side, a person of serious appearance
in a black silk hat, apropos of the line he had crossed by, "I may be
wrong, but I shouldn't have put you down to be an American."
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