"I won't see any rooms till I know your price. I won't stir a peg till I
know what's to pay. I've come from Chicago, where folks know what's
what, and I'm going to do Yoorup on the cheap!"

Saint Catherine worshipped her country's aristocracy. One day Jonathan
happened to be putting on his coat in the hall, when somebody knocked at
the front door. Forgetting that the act, so natural to an American, is
ungentlemanly and menial in England, he opened the door himself. A
couple of young swells inquired for Saint Catherine.

"I just saw her go out," answered Jonathan.

"Tell her that the brothers of Lord Verisopht called," said the
spokesman.

"I'll tell her," spoke Jonathan; "but, good heavens, young man, don't
lords' brothers have any names of their own in this country?"

Another day came a gorgeous individual with a bouquet to the door.

"What skion of the British nobility is that?" asked Jonathan.

"That is Lord Blank's footman," replied Saint Catherine.

"My! Well, whose footman is _that_?" continued her interlocutor,
pointing to a less gorgeous person holding the reins.

"That is Lord Blank," answered Saint Catherine loftily.

"Sakes alive! Does that goose of a lord think he will stand any chance
with the girls when he takes such a howling swell as _that_ around with
him?" asked simple Jonathan.

To this question Saint Catherine deigned no reply, having, perhaps,
remarked the wicked twinkle of Jonathan's eye.

One of our _pensionnaires_ objected very much to the American language.
"It is principally slang," she said. This lady, no longer young, had
been three times upon the eve of marriage, had had three bridal dresses,
had countermanded three wedding-feasts. She was heiress at that time to
the fifty thousand pounds she has since inherited, and the persistent
failure of her matrimonial endeavors surprised us all.

"It is because Monsieur mon Pere is perfectly addled on the matter of
settlements, and rowed with every one of my _fiances_," she explained.

She said one day, "The gov'nor has done me out of a guinea of my
allowance this week. He's a first-class _Do_!"

Another time, "The mater and I prefer to live in our own house, but the
gov'nor won't hear to it. He prefers 'diggin's' where he can always have
his whist."

Some time after our sojourn in Bloomsbury "diggin's" we found ourselves
in a Continental _pension_, the very reverse of this in every respect.
It was a Parisian _pension bourgeoise_,