"
"Never flatter! Mr. Carrington," drawled Miss Dare; "I do not need
it, and it does not become your style. Tell me, Lord Dunbeg, is not
Mr. Carrington a little your idea of General Washington restored to
us in his prime?"
"After your account of General Washington, Miss Dare, how can I
agree with you?"
"After all," said Lord Skye, "I think we must agree that Miss Dare
is in the main right about the charms of Mount Vernon. Even Mrs.
Lee, on the way up, agreed that the General, who is the only
permanent resident here, has the air of being confoundedly bored
in his tomb. I don't myself love your dreadful Capitol yonder, but I
prefer it to a bucolic life here. And I account in this way for my
want of enthusiasm for your great General. He liked no kind of life
but this. He seems to have been greater in the character of a
home-sick Virginia planter than as General or President. I forgive
him his inordinate dulness, for he was not a diplomatist and it was
not his business to lie, but he might once in a way have forgotten
Mount Vernon."
Dunbeg here burst in with an excited protest; all his words seemed
to shove each other aside in their haste to escape first. "All our
greatest Englishmen have been home-sick country squires. I am a
home-sick country squire myself."
"How interesting!" said Miss Dare under her breath.
Mr. Gore here joined in: "It is all very well for you gentlemen to
measure General Washington according to your own private
twelve-inch carpenter's rule.
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