dove-notes into my ears.

I remember overhearing myself described on a steamboat by a pretty
American girl of sixteen, as "a quaint gentle old guy who talks awful
rot which no one can understand, and is all the time thinking about
something else." My sudden emergence from the companion-way, where I
was lighting a cigarette, brought red confusion into the young person's
cheeks.

"How old do you think I am?" I asked.

"Oh, about sixty," quoth the damsel.

"I'm glad I'm quaint and gentle, even though I do talk rot," said I.

With the resourcefulness of her nation she linked her arm in mine and
started a confidential walk up and down the deck.

"You are just a dear," she remarked.

She could not have said more to Anastasius Dose had he been there;
as far as I can recollect he must just then have been dying of the
Inevitable in Iceland. Perhaps the few months had brought me to resemble
him. Instinctively I put my hand to my head to reassure myself that I
was not wearing a rakish little soft felt hat with a partridge-feather,
and I reflected with some complacency that my rimless pince-nez did not
give me the owlish appearance produced by Anastasius Dose's great round,
iron-rimmed goggles. From such crumbs of vanity are we sometimes reduced
to take comfort.

"I just want to know what you are," said my young American friend.

Shall I confess my attraction? She brought a dim suggestion of Carlotta.
She had Carlotta's colouring and Carlotta's candour. But there the
resemblance stopped. The grey matter of her brain had been distilled
from the air of Wall Street, and there were precious few things between
earth and sky of which she hadn't prescience.

"I'm a broken-down philosopher," said I.

"Oh, that's nothing. So is everybody as soon as they get sense. What
did you make your money in?"

"I've not made any money," I answered, meekly.

"I thought all people who were knighted in your country had made piles
of money."

"Knighted!" I exclaimed. "What on earth do you think a quaint old guy
like myself could possibly have done to get knighted?"

"Then you're a baronet," she said, severely.

"I assure you it is not my fault."

"I thought all baronets were wicked. They are in the novels. Somehow you
don't look like a baronet. You ought to have a black moustache and an
eyeglass and smoke a cigar and sneer. But, say, how do you fill up the
time if you do nothing to make money?"

"I am going through the world," said I