g. 'You'll have to prove that you can read and write, which is more
than they would ask of you if you were going into the Cabinet; but we live
in an intellectual age, and we test all the cabin-boys, and it is only the
steersman we take on trust.'

Though Nina was eager to resent Atlee's impertinence on Walpole, she could
not help feeling interested and amused by his sketches of his travels.

If, in speaking of Greece, he only gave the substance of the article he had
written for the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, as the paper was yet unpublished
all the remarks were novel, and the anecdotes fresh and sparkling. The tone
of light banter and raillery in which he described public life in Greece
and Greek statesmen, might have lost some of its authority had any one
remembered to count the hours the speaker had spent in Athens; and Nina
was certainly indignant at the hazardous effrontery of the criticisms. It
was not, then, without intention that she arose to retire while Atlee was
relating an interesting story of brigandage, and he--determined to repay
the impertinence in kind--continued to recount his history as he arose to
open the door for her to pass out. Her insolent look as she swept by was
met by a smile of admiration on his part that actually made her cheek
tingle with anger.

Old Kearney dozed off gently, under the influence of names of places and
persons that did not interest him, and the two young men drew their chairs
to the fire, and grew confidential at once.

'I think you have sent my cousin away in bad humour,' said Dick.

'I see it,' said Joe, as he slowly puffed his cigar. 'That young lady's
head has been so cruelly turned by flattery of late, that the man who does
not swing incense before her affronts her.'

'Yes; but you went out of your way to provoke her. It is true she knows
little of Greece or Greeks, but it offends her to hear them slighted or
ridiculed; and you took pains to do both.'

'Contemptible little country! with a mock-army, a mock-treasury, and a
mock-chamber. The only thing real is the debt and the brigandage.'

'But why tell her so? You actually seemed bent on irritating her.'

'Quite true--so I was. My dear Dick, you have some lessons to learn in
life, and one of them is that, just as it is bad heraldry to put colour
on colour, it is an egregious blunder to follow flattery by flattery. The
woman who has been spoiled by over-admiration must be approached with
something else as unlike it