But I'm very English in most ways," he returned quickly.

Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to my mother." Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment.
"Oh, surely not ?" she dissented.
"But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his half-French nationality.

"But yes--I'm too English to please her.
It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women.

My mother loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband.

But she desires her son to be a good Frenchman!.