the quiet pools. Have you got the cows down, dear?"

The Senator, at the other window, looked across disparagingly, hard at
work on his beard. He said nothing, but after a time abruptly thrust his
hands in his pockets, and his feet out in front of him in a manner which
expressed absolute dissent. When momma said she thought she would try to
get a little sleep he looked round observantly, and as soon as her
slumber was sound and comfortable he beckoned to me.

"See here," he said, not unkindly, argumentatively. "About those cows.
In fact, about all these pointers your mother's been giving you. They're
all very nice and poetic--I don't want to run down momma's ideas--but
they don't strike me as original. I won't say I could put my finger on
it, but I'm perfectly certain I've heard of the poplars and the women
field labourers of Normandy somewhere before. She doesn't do it on
purpose"--the Senator inclined his head with deprecation toward the
sleeping form opposite, and lowered his voice--"and I don't know that
I'd mention it to you under any other circumstances, but momma's a
fearful plagiarist. She doesn't hesitate anywhere. I've known her do it
to William Shakespeare and the Book of Job, let alone modern authors. In
dealing with her suggestions you want to be very careful. Otherwise
momma'll get you into trouble."

I nodded with affectionate consideration. "I'll make a note of what you
say, Senator," I replied, and immediately, from motives of delicacy, we
changed the subject. As we talked, poppa told me in confidence how much
he expected of the democratic idea in Paris. He said that even the
short time we had spent in England was enough to enable him to detect
the subserviency of the lower classes there and to resent it, as a man
and a brother. He spoke sadly and somewhat bitterly of the manners of
the brother man who shaved him, which he found unjustifiably affable,
and of the inexcusable abasement of a British railway porter if you gave
him a shilling. He said he was glad to leave England, it was
demoralising to live there; you lost your sense of the dignity of
labour, and in the course of time you were almost bound to degenerate
into a swell. He expressed a good deal of sympathy with the aristocracy
on this account, concentrating his indignation upon those who, as it
were, made aristocrats of innocent human beings against their will. It
was more than he would have ventured to say in public, but in talking to
me p