'; the English say 'laht' and
the Americans say 'late'."

The weather had now been clear quite long enough, and it was raining
again, a fine, bitter, piercing drizzle. They asked the girl if it
always rained in Ansbach; and she owned that it nearly always did. She
said that sometimes she longed for a little American summer; that it was
never quite warm in Ansbach; and when they had got out into the rain,
March said: "It was very nice to stumble on Chicago in an Ansbach
book-store. You ought to have told her you had a married daughter in
Chicago. Don't miss another such chance."

"We shall need another bag if we keep on buying books at this rate,"
said his wife with tranquil irrelevance; and not to give him time for
protest; she pushed him into a shop where the valises in the window
perhaps suggested her thought. March made haste to forestall her there
by saying they were Americans, but the mistress of the shop seemed to
have her misgivings, and "Born Americans, perhaps?" she ventured. She
had probably never met any but the naturalized sort, and supposed these
were the only sort. March re-assured her, and then she said she had a
son living in Jersey City, and she made March take his address that he
might tell him he had seen his mother; she had apparently no conception
what a great way Jersey City is from New York.

Mrs. March would not take his arm when they came out. "Now, that is what
I never can get used to in you, Basil, and I've tried to palliate it for
twenty-seven years. You know you won't look up that poor woman's son!
Why did you let her think you would?"

"How could I tell her I wouldn't? Perhaps I shall."

"No, no! You never will. I know you're good and kind, and that's why
I can't understand your being so cruel. When we get back, how will you
ever find time to go over to Jersey City?"

He could not tell, but at last he said: "I'll tell you what! You must
keep me up to it. You know how much you enjoy making me do my duty, and
this will be such a pleasure!"

She laughed forlornly, but after a moment she took his arm; and he
began, from the example of this good mother, to philosophize the
continuous simplicity and sanity of the people of Ansbach under all
their civic changes. Saints and soldiers, knights and barons,
margraves, princes, kings, emperors, had come and gone, and left their
single-hearted, friendly subjectfolk pretty much what they found them.
The people had suffered and survived through a t