rofundity of your contempt I can only
guess at. Whatever it is, I share it. We are a poor lot.

"'At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan.'

Which is all true except the last line."

She smiled. "You are too severe. I consider man the highest form of
animal life--after the dog and the elephant."

"Then where does woman come in?"

"Oh--as man's satellite she is hard to place. Her proper position might
be anywhere between the peacock and the parrot."

Pats shook his head, slowly and sadly. "That's an awful utterance!"

"But it enables you to realize her vanity in aspiring to the wisdom of
man."

Father Burke laughed. "Fighting the Boer, Captain Boyd, is a different
thing from skirmishing with the American girl."

"Indeed it is! For on the battle-field there is always one chance of
victory. But I have not been fighting the Boers. I was trying to help
the Boers against the English."

"Ah, good!" said the priest. "You were on the right side."

But the lady shook her head. "I don't know about that. I should have
joined the English and fought against the Boers."

"But, my dear child," exclaimed Father Burke, "the cause of the Boers is
so manifestly the cause of right and justice! They were fighting for
their freedom,--the very existence of their country."

"Possibly, but the English officers are very handsome, and so stylish!
And the Boers are common creatures--mostly farmers."

Pats regarded her in surprise. "That doesn't affect the principle of the
thing. Even a farmer has rights."

"Principles are so tiresome!" and she looked away, as if the subject
wearied her.

"Does it make no difference with your sympathies," he asked with some
earnestness, "whether a man is in the right or in the wrong? Would you
have had no sympathy for the Greeks at Marathon?"

She raised her eyebrows, and with a faint shrug replied, "I am sure I
don't know. Was that an important battle?"

"Very."

"In South Africa?"

Pats thought, at first, this question was in jest. She looked him
serenely in the face, however, and he saw nothing in her eyes but the
expectation of a serious answer to a simple question. Before he was
ready with a reply, she inquired:

"Were you at that battle?"

He was so bewildered by this question, and from such a woman, that for a
moment he could not respond. Father Burke, however, in his calm,
paternal voice, gave the required facts.

"The battle of Marat