Page:The Steel Flea.djvu/87

 the left-handed man said: "That's all the more agreeable, because if you are going to occupy yourself with such a matter, it must be with a definite intention, and as I do not feel that towards a foreign nation, then why torment the girls?"

He pleased the Englishmen in these arguments, also, so that they again began to clap him on the shoulders and the knees, with pleasantness, and asked: "We would just like to know, out of mere curiosity: what defect have you observed in our girls, and why do you shun them?"

Thereupon the left-handed man answered them frankly: "I accuse them of no defect, but what does not please me is that their dress sort of flutters about them, and one cannot make out what they have on, and for what purpose; first there is some sort of thing or other, and underneath there's another