een-Erin."

"Is that your story?" asked Bessie Alden.

"Don't you think it's interesting?" her sister replied.

"I don't believe it," said the young girl.

"Ah," cried Mrs. Westgate, "you are not so simple after all! Believe it
or not, as you please; there is no smoke without fire."

"Is that the way," asked Bessie after a moment, "that you expect your
friends to treat you?"

"I defy them to treat me very ill, because I shall not give them the
opportunity. With the best will in the world, in that case they can't be
very offensive."

Bessie Alden was silent a moment. "I don't see what makes you talk that
way," she said. "The English are a great people."

"Exactly; and that is just the way they have grown great--by dropping
you when you have ceased to be useful. People say they are not clever;
but I think they are very clever."

"You know you have liked them--all the Englishmen you have seen," said
Bessie.

"They have liked me," her sister rejoined; "it would be more correct to
say that. And, of course, one likes that."

Bessie Alden resumed for some moments her studies in sea green. "Well,"
she said, "whether they like me or not, I mean to like them. And
happily," she added, "Lord Lambeth does not owe me ten pounds."

During the first few days after their arrival at Jones's Hotel our
charming Americans were much occupied with what they would have called
looking about them. They found occasion to make a large number of
purchases, and their opportunities for conversation were such only as
were offered by the deferential London shopmen. Bessie Alden, even
in driving from the station, took an immense fancy to the British
metropolis, and at the risk of exhibiting her as a young woman of vulgar
tastes it must be recorded that for a considerable period she desired no
higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab.
To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and
it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the
trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston
found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that
whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street and Regent Street,
she was about to return with her sister to Jones's Hotel, she made an
earnest request that they should be driven home by way of Westminster
Abbey. She had begun by asking whether it would not be possible to take
the Tower on the way to