efore the Panorama left us. 'Be a good
boy,' says I, 'and don't fall in love with any of them darkies as you'll
find in' Mericky. So help me lucky, I'd a good mind ter come after you,'
says I, 'and marry their Ole Man jess ter set 'em a good example.'"

By which it will be perceived that the Lady Sarah's knowledge of the
great and mighty Republic beyond the seas was clearly limited. Such
ignorance had often provoked the Archbishop of Bloomsbury to
exasperation, it annoyed him not a little to-night.

"My dear child," he protested, "you are laboring under a very great
delusion. Be assured that America is a very great country,
where--er--hem--they may eat each other, but not as you imagine. I
believe that the American ladies are very beautiful. I have met some of
them--er--in the old days, when--hem--the Bishops showed their
confidence in me by drinking my claret and finding it to their liking.
All that we have in England they have in America--prisons, paupers,
policemen, palaces. You are thinking of Africa, Sarah, darkest Africa,
that used to be, but is fast disappearing. Led me add--"

Sarah, however, was already busy upon her dozen of oysters and had no
patience to hear the good man out.

"Don't you take on so, Bishop," she intervened, "'Mericky ain't done
much for me and precious little it's going ter do for you. What I says
is, let those as have got a good 'ome stop there and be thankful. Yer
may talk about your oshun wave, but I ain't taking any, no, not though
there was diamonds on the sea beach the other side and 'ot-'arse roses
fer nothink. Who ever sees their ole friends as is swallered up by the
sea? Who ever heard of Alb Kennedy since he went ter Berling as he told
us for to mike his fortune? Ho, a life on the oshun wave if yer like,
but not for them as has bread and cheese ashore and a good bed to go to
arterwards; that's what I shall say as long as I've breath in my body."

"Betty," the boy, answered to this earnest lamentation with a sound word
of good common sense.

"You're a-goin' to sleep in one o' them boxes to-night, ain't you,
Sarah?" he asked, and she admitted the truth of his conclusions.

"And sweeter dreams I would have if I knew where the Dook was a-layin'
his 'ed this night," she added.

The Archbishop ate a succulent morsel and drank a long draught from the
unadorned black bottle.

"Nothing is known of Kennedy at Hampstead," he interposed, "I have made
diligent inquiries of the gardene