Penelopes English Experiences | Page 5

Francesca. "No; they were only five shillings. Oh, perhaps they lumped
the two things; if seven and five are twelve, then that is just what they
did. (Here she takes a pencil.) Yes, they are twelve, so that's right; what
a comfort! Now here's two and six on the 13th. That was yesterday, and
I can always remember yesterdays; they are my strong point. I didn't
spend a penny yesterday; oh yes! I did pay half a crown for a potted
plant, but it was not two and six, and it was a half-crown because it was
the first time I had seen one and I took particular notice. I'll speak to
Dawson about it, but it will make no difference. Nobody but an expert
English accountant could find a flaw in one of these bills and prove his
case."
By this time we have agreed that the weekly bill as a whole is
substantially correct, and all that Salemina has to do is to estimate our
several shares in it; so Francesca and I say good night and leave her
toiling like Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum. By midnight she has
generally brought the account to a point where a half-hour's fresh
attention in the early morning will finish it. Not that she makes it come
out right to a penny. She has been treasurer of the Boston Band of
Benevolence, of the Saturday Morning Sloyd Circle, of the Club for the
Reception of Russian Refugees, and of the Society for the Brooding of
Buddhism; but none of these organisations carries on its existence by
means of pounds, shillings, and pence, or Salemina's resignation would
have been requested long ago. However, we are not disposed to be
captious; we are too glad to get rid of the bill. If our united thirds make
four or five shillings in excess, we divide them equally; if it comes the
other way about, we make it up in the same manner; always meeting
the sneers of masculine critics with Dr. Holmes's remark that a faculty
for numbers is a sort of detached-lever arrangement that can be put into

a mighty poor watch.
Chapter II.
The powdered footman smiles.

Salemina is so English! I can't think how she manages. She had not
been an hour on British soil before she asked a servant to fetch in some
coals and mend the fire; she followed this Anglicism by a request for a
grilled chop, 'a grilled, chump chop, waiter, please,' and so on from
triumph to triumph. She now discourses of methylated spirits as if she
had never in her life heard of alcohol, and all the English equivalents
for Americanisms are ready for use on the tip of her tongue. She says
'conserv't'ry' and 'observ't'ry'; she calls the chambermaid 'Mairy,' which
is infinitely softer, to be sure, than the American 'Mary,' with its
over-long a; she ejaculates 'Quite so!' in all the pauses of conversation,
and talks of smoke- rooms, and camisoles, and luggage-vans, and
slip-bodies, and trams, and mangling, and goffering. She also eats jam
for breakfast as if she had been reared on it, when every one knows that
the average American has to contract the jam habit by patient and
continuous practice.
This instantaneous assimilation of English customs does not seem to be
affectation on Salemina's part; nor will I wrong her by fancying that she
went through a course of training before she left Boston. From the
moment she landed you could see that her foot was on her native heath.
She inhaled the fog with a sense of intoxication that the east winds of
New England had never given her, and a great throb of patriotism
swelled in her breast when she first met the Princess of Wales in Hyde
Park.
As for me, I get on charmingly with the English nobility and
sufficiently well with the gentry, but the upper servants strike terror to
my soul. There is something awe-inspiring to me about an English
butler. If they would only put him in livery, or make him wear a silver
badge; anything, in short, to temper his pride and prevent one from

mistaking him for the master of the house or the bishop within his gates.
When I call upon Lady DeWolfe, I say to myself impressively, as I go
up the steps: 'You are as good as a butler, as well born and well bred as
a butler, even more intelligent than a butler. Now, simply because he
has an unapproachable haughtiness of demeanour, which you can
respectfully admire, but can never hope to imitate, do not cower
beneath the polar light of his eye; assert yourself; be a woman; be an
American citizen!' All in vain. The moment the door opens I ask for
Lady