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Page 25
George looked round him morosely.
"This," he said, "is England--this restaurant, I mean. You don't
need to go any farther. Just take a good look at this place and
you have seen the whole country and can go home again. You may
judge a country by its meals. A people with imagination will eat
with imagination. Look at the French; look at ourselves, The
Englishman loathes imagination. He goes to a place like this and
says: 'Don't bother me to think. Here's half a dollar. Give me
food--any sort of food--until I tell you to stop.' And that's the
principle on which he lives his life. 'Give me anything, and
don't bother me!' That's his motto."
"If that was meant to apply to Freddie and me, I think you're
very rude. Do you mean that any girl would have done for him, so
long as it was a girl?"
George Emerson showed a trace of confusion. Being honest with
himself, he had to admit that he did not exactly know what he did
mean--if he meant anything. That, he felt rather bitterly, was
the worst of Aline. She would never let a fellow's good things go
purely as good things; she probed and questioned and spoiled the
whole effect. He was quite sure that when he began to speak he
had meant something, but what it was escaped him for the moment.
He had been urged to the homily by the fact that at a neighboring
table he had caught sight of a stout young Briton, with a red
face, who reminded him of the Honorable Frederick Threepwood. He
mentioned this to Aline.
"Do you see that fellow in the gray suit--I think he has been
sleeping in it--at the table on your right? Look at the stodgy
face. See the glassy eye. If that man sandbagged your Freddie and
tied him up somewhere, and turned up at the church instead of
him, can you honestly tell me you would know the difference?
Come, now, wouldn't you simply say, 'Why, Freddie, how natural
you look!' and go through the ceremony without a suspicion?"
"He isn't a bit like Freddie."
"My dear girl, there isn't a man in this restaurant under the age
of thirty who isn't just like Freddie. All Englishmen look
exactly alike, talk exactly alike, and think exactly alike."
"And you oughtn't to speak of him as Freddie. You don't know
him."
"Yes, I do. And, what is more, he expressly asked me to call him
Freddie. 'Oh, dash it, old top, don't keep on calling me
Threepwood! Freddie to pals!' Those were his very words."
"George, you're making this up."
"Not at all. We met last night at the National Sporting Club.
Porky Jones was going twenty rounds with Eddie Flynn. I offered
to give three to one on Eddie. Freddie, who was sitting next to
me, took me in fivers. And if you want any further proof of your
young man's pin-headedness; mark that! A child could have seen
that Eddie had him going. Eddie comes from Pittsburgh--God bless
it! My own home town!"
"Did your Eddie win?"
"You don't listen--I told you he was from Pittsburgh. And
afterward Threepwood chummed up with me and told me that to real
pals like me he was Freddie. I was a real pal, as I understood
it, because I would have to wait for my money. The fact was, he
explained, his old governor had cut off his bally allowance."
"You're simply trying to poison my mind against him; and I don't
think it's very nice of you, George."
"What do you mean--poison your mind? I'm not poisoning your mind;
I'm simply telling you a few things about him. You know perfectly
well that you don't love him, and that you aren't going to marry
him--and that you are going to marry me."
"How do you know I don't love my Freddie?"
"If you can look me straight in the eyes and tell me you do, I
will drop the whole thing and put on a little page's dress and
carry your train up the aisle. Now, then!"
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