Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/89

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"That orchestra'll be here presently to murder us with some more Puccini and Leoncavallo and Mascagni—even Verdi, if not worse—and of course this type of Americans all adore it. We'd have avoided the place; but we're driven out of the smoking-room for the evening. That gang's still up there and they've got about a dozen more with 'em now, all of the same kind. They didn't go to dinner, and they're singing louder than ever."

"Nowhere in the world nowadays," Macklyn said gloomily, "can one be sheltered from our home-bred boor who carries his native manners with him all over the world. The travellers of every other nation accommodate themselves to the places they're in, and show plasticity—perception of the manners and customs of other people. That fellow this afternoon hadn't the slightest idea how he'd been scorched and put in his place merely by a lady's superb unconsciousness of him. I didn't see her at dinner."

"She has a table on the balcony of the dining salon," Mr. Jones informed him. "It's by the railing;—I caught a glint of that wonderful metallic-looking hair of hers—you couldn't mistake it. She was with the boy she called Hyacinthe; she's his mother and their name's Momoro. I asked the chief steward."