“Well, I was only going to say that in America you are, as hosts, quite sincere in wishing us to enjoy ourselves and to like America.  Here we will only do our duty by you if you bring letters to us, and we don’t care a hang whether you like England or not.  We like it, and that’s enough.”

“I see,” I said, with cold chills of aversion for England as a nation creeping over my enthusiasm.

“Now in America,” he proceeded, “your host sends his carriage for you, or calls for you, takes you with him, stays by you, introduces you to the people he thinks you would most care to meet, and tells them who and what you are; sees that you have everything that’s going, and that you see everything that’s going, and then takes you back to your club.”

“Then he asks you if you have had a good time, and if you like America!” I supplemented.

“Oh, Lord, yes!  He asks you that all the time, and so does everybody else,” he said, with a groan.

“Now, you were unkind if you didn’t tell him all he wanted you to, for I do assure you it was pure American kindness of heart which made him take all that trouble for you.  I know, too, without your telling me, that he introduced you to all the prettiest girls, and gave you a chance to talk to each of them, and only hovered around waiting to take you on to the next one, as soon as he could catch you with ease.”

“He did just that.  How did you know?”

“Because he was a typical American host, God bless him, and that is the way we do things over there.”

“Now here,” he went on, “we consider our duty done if we take a man to dine, and then to some reception, where we turn him loose after one or two introductions.”

“What a hateful way of doing!” I said, politely.

“It is.  It must seem barbarous to you.”

“It does.”

“Or if you are a woman we send our carriages to let you drive where you like.  Or we send you invitations to go to needlework exhibitions where you have to pay five shillings admission.”

I said nothing, and he laughed.

“I know they have done that to you,” he exclaimed.  “Haven’t they?”

“I have been delightfully entertained at luncheons and dinners and teas, and I have been introduced to as charming people in London as I ever hope to meet anywhere,” I said, stolidly.

“But you won’t tell about the needlework.  Oh, I say, but that’s jolly!  Fancy what you said when you began to get those beastly things!” And he laughed again.

“I didn’t say anything,” I said.  Then he roared.  Yet he claimed to be a “typical Britisher.”

“We mean kindly,” he went on.  “You mustn’t lay it up against us.”

“Oh, we don’t.  We are having a lovely time.”

There are times when the truth would be brutal.