Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/77

 imagined by the artist in wrought-iron who made the railing. The scrollwork seems to spring from her, carrying on her own delicacies of outline; and with that little green knee-long skirt fluttering against a faded blue sea the colour of a Leonardo background, she's the most appropriate thing I could imagine for a Mediterranean garden on a precipice. Yet how completely she's an American, Eugene! One never mistakes your compatriots for anything else. She has the American profile that the most charming of your young ladies all contrive to obtain—especially the straight little nose that has the piquant effect of turning upward without actually doing it. I suppose, alas, she talks through it?"

"My dear Charles Orbison!" Rennie exclaimed. "How careful you British are never to miss a chance of proving the stubbornness of your race! Early in the nineteenth century you got the legend established among you that we're all Yankees and all talk through our noses; so you'll believe it forever, no matter what your ears tell you. As a matter of fact, the young lady yonder has studied music in Paris; she sings really well, and when she talks doesn't talk through her nose. Neither has she been at the pains to learn how to chirp like a vociferous little bird in