t be such a
greedy boy. If you could only enter into the spirit of the thing, you
wouldn't be so oppressed by the food question. Oh, dear! How important
it does seem to be to men. Gerda, _hur gammal aer ni_?"

The maiden sullenly left the room, and I felt convinced that Letitia had
Swedishly asked her to do so. I was wrong. "_Hur gammal aer ni_," Letitia
explained, simply meant, "How old are you?"

"She evidently didn't want to tell me," was my wife's comment, as we
went to the drawing-room. "I imagine, dear, that she doesn't quite like
the idea of my ferreting out Swedish so persistently. But I intend to
persevere. The worst of conversation books is that one acquires a
language in such a parroty way. Now, in my book, the only answer to the
question 'How old are you?' is, 'I was born on the tenth of August,
1852.' For the life of me, I couldn't vary that, and it would be most
embarrassing. It would make me fifty-two. If any one asked me in Swedish
how old I was, I should _have_ to be fifty-two!"

"When I think of my five advertisements," I said lugubriously, as I
threw myself into an arm-chair, fatigued at my efforts to discover
dinner, "when I remember our expectation, and the pleasant anticipations
of to-day, I feel very bitter, Letitia. Just to think that from it all
nothing has resulted but that beastly mummy, that atrocious ossified
thing."

"Archie, Archie!" said my wife warningly; "please be calm. Perhaps I was
too engrossed with my studies to note the deficiencies of dinner. But do
remember that I pleaded with her for a Swedish meal. The poor thing did
what I asked her to do. Our dinner was evidently Swedish. It was not her
fault that I asked for it. To-morrow, dear, it shall be different. We
had better stick to the American regime. It is more satisfactory to you.
At any rate, we have somebody in the house, and if our five
advertisements had brought forth five hundred applicants we should only
have kept one. So don't torture yourself, Archie. Try and imagine that
we _had_ five hundred applicants, and that we selected Gerda Lyberg."

"I can't, Letitia," I said sulkily, and I heaved a heavy sigh.

"Come," she said soothingly, "come and study Swedish with me. It will be
most useful for your _Lives of Great Men_. You can read up the Swedes in
the original. I'll entertain you with this book, and you'll forget all
about Mrs. Potz--I mean Gerda Lyberg. By-the-by, Archie, she doesn't
remind me so much of Hedda Gab