[Under Two Flags by Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]]@TWC D-Link bookUnder Two Flags CHAPTER VIII 4/18
We might have a Bureau where we registered all our social experiences, and gave the Plutocracy a map of Belgravia, with all the pitfalls marked; all the inaccessible heights colored red, and all the hard-up great people dotted with gold to show the amount they'd be bought for--with directions to the ignoramuses whom to know, court, and avoid.
We might form a Courier Company, and take Brummagem abroad under our guidance, so that the Continent shouldn't think Englishwomen always wear blue veils and gray shawls, and hear every Englishman shout for porter and beefsteak in Tortoni's.
We might teach them to take their hats off to women, and not to prod pictures with sticks, and to look at statutes without poking them with an umbrella, and to be persuaded that all foreigners don't want to be bawled at, and won't understand bad French any the better for its being shouted.
Or we might have a Joint-Stock Toilette Association, for the purposes of national art, and receive Brummagem to show it how to dress; we might even succeed in making the feminine British Public drape itself properly, and the B.P. masculine wear boots that won't creak, and coats that don't wrinkle, and take off its hat without a jerk, as though it were a wooden puppet hung on very stiff strings.
Or one might--" "Talk the greatest nonsense under the sun!" laughed the Seraph.
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