I'm sure she has lived all her life in a boarding-house,
and I detest the manners and the liberties of such places. If you
ask me if I prefer my own manners, which you doubtless think very bad,
I'll tell you that I prefer them immensely. Miss Stackpole knows I
detest boarding-house civilization, and she detests me for detesting
it, because she thinks it the highest in the world. She'd like
Gardencourt a great deal better if it were a boarding-house. For me, I
find it almost too much of one! We shall never get on together
therefore, and there's no use trying."
Mrs. Touchett was right in guessing that Henrietta disapproved of
her, but she had not quite put her finger on the reason. A day or
two after Miss Stackpole's arrival she had made some invidious
reflexions on American hotels, which excited a vein of counterargument
on the part of the correspondent of the Interviewer, who in the
exercise of her profession had acquainted herself, in the western
world, with every form of caravansary. Henrietta expressed the opinion
that American hotels were the best in the world, and Mrs. Touchett,
fresh from a renewed struggle with them, recorded a conviction that
they were the worst.
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