"Hardly the same thing." He replied to the first statement, because as far as he'd been able to determine, the idea of a monopoly on tea and crumpets -or whatever- was also an American assumption.

He shook his head at the actual question, "Those couplings were arranged and generally chaperoned by family rather than the would-be happy couple themselves. A kiss on the cheek would have been incredibly daring and certainly only after a proposal had been secured." His brow creased a little then, "I'm sure some families weren't quite so strict as the Paynes, but that's certainly what would have been expected of me. It's what was expected of my older brother, or would have been, once the war was over."

It occurred to him, as it always did, that he could just look up whether or not Bernard had survived, and if he'd carried on the family name, or if it had only been Daisy in the end, marrying into some other family, ending that branch of the Payne line. But as he always did whenever the thought occurred to him again, he decided that he didn't actually want to know, it wasn't as if he would gain any comfort from knowing one way or the other.