The Buccaneers

He laid a hand on his wife’s graying blond hair, and brushed her care-worn forehead with the tip of his moustache; a ritual gesture which convinced him that he had kissed her, and Mrs. St George that she had been kissed.

Miss Testvalley sighed at this nomadic wastefulness. Perhaps because she had always been a wanderer herself she loved orderly drawers and shelves, and bunches of lavender between delicately fluted under-garments.
“Do you always live i

The three mothers — Mrs. St George, Mrs. Elmsworth, and Mrs. Closson — have all made an attempt to launch their daughters in New York, where their husbands are in business, but have no social standing (the families, all of very ordinary origin, being from the south-west, or from the northern part of the state of New York). The New York experiment is only partly successful, for though the girls attract attention by their beauty they are viewed distrustfully by the New York hostesses whose verdict counts, their origin being hazy and their appearance what was then called “loud.” So, though admired at Saratoga, Long Branch and the White Sulphur Springs, they fail at Newport and in New York, and the young men flirt with them but do not offer marriage.

Mrs. St George has a governess for her youngest daughter, Nan, who is not yet out. She knows that governesses are fashionable, and is determined that Nan shall have the same advantages as the daughters of the New York aristocracy, for she suspects that her daughter Virginia’s lack of success, and the failure of Lizzy and Mabel Elmsworth, may have been due to lack of social training. Mrs. St George therefore engages a governess who has been in the best houses in New York and London, and a highly competent middle-aged woman named Laura Testvalley (she is of Italian origin — the name is corrupted from Testavaglia) arrives in the family. Laura Testvalley has been in several aristocratic families in England, but after a run of bad luck has come to the States on account of the great demand for superior “finishing” governesses, and the higher salaries offered. Miss Testvalley is an adventuress, but a great- souled one. She has been a year with the fashionable Mrs. Parmore of New York, who belongs to one of the oldest Knickerbocker families, but she finds the place dull, and is anxious for higher pay and a more lavish household. She recognizes the immense social gifts of the St George girls, and becomes in particular passionately attached to Nan.

She says to Mrs. St George: “Why try Newport again? Go straight to England first, and come back to America with the prestige of a brilliant London season.”

Mrs. St George is dazzled, and persuades her husband to let her go. The Closson and Elmsworth girls are friends of the oldest St George girl, and they too persuade their parents to let them try London.

The three families embark together on the adventure, and though furiously jealous of each other, are clever enough to see the advantage of backing each other up; and Miss Testvalley leads them all like a general.

In each particular family the sense of solidarity is of course even stronger t