believe this is called wise-cracking. Rose was right when she said he thinks England is a joke, a comic sort of toy, but I don’t believe he despises it, as she feels he does; it is just that he doesn’t take it seriously. I am rather surprised that Rose resents this so much, because England isn’t one of her special things in the way it is mine — oh, not flags and Kipling and outposts of Empire and such, but the country and London and houses like Scoatney. Eating bread-and-cheese at an inn felt most beautifully English — though the
