Him I visited every morning to buy for my breakfast one of those
Spanish melons which they have everywhere in England, and which
put our native cantaloupes to shame; and we always fell into a
little talk over our transaction of fourpence or sixpence, as the
case might be. After I had confided that I was an American, he
said one day, "Ah, the Americans are clever people." Then he
added, "I hope you won't mind my saying it, sir, but I think
their ladies are rather harder than our English ladies, sir."
"Yes," I eagerly assented. "How do you mean? Sharper? Keener?"
"Well, not just that, sir."
"More practical? More business-like?" I pursued.
"Well, I shouldn't like to say that, sir. But--they seem rather
harder, sir; at least, judging from what I see of them in York,
sir. Rather harder, sir."
We remained not the less friends with that mystery between us;
and I bought my last melon of him on my last morning, when the
early September had turned somewhat sharply chill. That turn made
me ask what the winter was in York, and he boasted it very cold,
with ice and snow aplenty, and degrees of frost much like our
own.
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