I don't know them apart, hardly--they've all got names
like Rhine wines--but I know the gang as a whole, and if I
don't lift the roof clean off their particular synagogue,
then my name is mud."
Lord Plowden smiled. "I've always the greatest difficulty
to remember that you are an Englishman--a Londoner born,"
he declared pleasantly. "You don't talk in the least
like one. On shipboard I made sure you were an American--a
very characteristic one, I thought--of some curious
Western variety, you know. I never was more surprised
in my life than when you told me, the other day, that you
only left England a few years ago."
"Oh, hardly a 'few years'; more like fifteen," Thorpe
corrected him. He studied his companion's face with
slow deliberation.
"I'm going to say something that you mustn't take amiss,"
he remarked, after a little pause. "If you'd known that I
was an Englishman, when we first met, there on the steamer,
I kind o' suspect that you and I'd never have got much beyond
a nodding acquaintance--and even that mostly on my side.
I don't mean that I intended to conceal anything--that is,
not specially--but I've often thought since that it
was a mighty good thing I did. Now isn't that true--that
if you had taken me for one of your own countrymen you'd
have given me the cold shoulder?"
"I dare say there's a good deal in what you say,"
the other admitted, gently enough, but without contrition.
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