"Will you kindly mention just how?" said Jone.
"Yes," said I, "I will. In the first place, we've got to act as if we
had always been waited on and had never been satisfied with the way it
was done; we've got to let people think that we think we are a good
deal better than they are, and what they think about it doesn't make
the least difference; and then again we've got to live in better
quarters than these, and whatever they may be we must make people
think that we don't think they are quite good enough for us. If we do
all that, agents may be willing to let us vicarages."
"It strikes me," said Jone, "that these quarters are good enough for
us. I'm comfortable." And then he went on to say, madam, that when you
and your husband was in London you was well satisfied with just such
lodgings.
"That's all very well," I said, "for they never moved in the lower
paths of society, and so they didn't have to make any change, but just
went along as they had been used to go. But if we want to make people
believe we belong to that class I should choose, if I had my pick out
of English social varieties, we've got to bounce about as much above it
as we were born below it, so that we can strike somewhere near the
proper average."
"And what variety would you pick out, I'd like to know?" said Jone,
just a little red in the face, and looking as if I had told him he
didn't know timothy hay from oat straw.
