"
"Oh, mercy! It's ten o'clock!" Mrs. Schoville suddenly cried, her
husband having at last caught her eye from across the room. "I'm so
sorry I can't hear the rest, Mr. St. Vincent, how you escaped and all
that. But you must come and see me. I am just dying to hear!"
"And I took you for a tenderfoot, a _chechaquo_," Frona said meekly, as
St. Vincent tied his ear-flaps and turned up his collar preparatory to
leaving.
"I dislike posing," he answered, matching her meekness. "It smacks of
insincerity; it really is untrue. And it is so easy to slip into it.
Look at the old-timers,--'sour-doughs' as they proudly call themselves.
Just because they have been in the country a few years, they let
themselves grow wild and woolly and glorify in it. They may not know
it, but it is a pose. In so far as they cultivate salient
peculiarities, they cultivate falseness to themselves and live lies."
"I hardly think you are wholly just," Frona said, in defence of her
chosen heroes. "I do like what you say about the matter in general,
and I detest posing, but the majority of the old-timers would be
peculiar in any country, under any circumstances. That peculiarity is
their own; it is their mode of expression. And it is, I am sure, just
what makes them go into new countries. The normal man, of course,
stays at home."
"Oh, I quite agree with you, Miss Welse," he temporized easily.
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