"I believe that woman is an American," she would say. "That girl looks
as if she were a New Yorker," again. "That man's face looks as if it
belonged to Broadway. Oh, Betty! do you think I am right? I should say
those girls getting out of the hansom to go into Burnham & Staples' came
from out West and are going to buy thousands of things. Don't they look
like it?"
She began to lean forward and look on at things with an interest so
unlike her Stornham listlessness that Betty's heart was moved.
Her face looked alive, and little waves of colour rose under her skin.
Several times she laughed the natural little laugh of her girlhood which
it had seemed almost too much to expect to hear again. The first of
these laughs came when she counted her tenth American, a tall Westerner
of the cartoon type, sauntering along with an expression of speculative
enjoyment on his odd face, and evidently, though furtively, chewing
tobacco.
"I absolutely love him, Betty," she cried. "You couldn't mistake him for
anything else."
"No," answered Betty, feeling that she loved him herself, "not if you
found him embalmed in the Pyramids."
They pleased themselves immensely, trying to guess what he would buy
and take home to his wife and girls in his Western town--though Western
towns were very grand and amazing in these days, Betty explained, and
knew they could give points to New York.
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