n, an
officer, a full head taller than I am, broad shoulders, splendidly put
up altogether. Bless me! if she didn't turn to him and say, 'Oh,
you're so nice and big, you're even bigger than this other gentleman,
and I need you both in this dreadful crush. If you'll be good enough
to stand on either side of me, I shall be awfully obliged.' We
exchanged amused glances of embarrassment over her blonde head, but
there was no resisting the irresistible. She was a small person, but
she had the soul of a general, and we obeyed orders. We stood guard
over her little ladyship for nearly an hour, and I must say she
entertained us thoroughly, for she was as clever as she was pretty.
Then I got her a seat in one of the windows of my club, while the
other man, armed with a full description, went out to hunt up the
mother; and by Jove! he found her, too. She would have her mother, and
her mother she had. They were awfully jolly people; they came to
luncheon in my chambers at the Albany afterwards, and we grew to be
great friends."

"I dare say she was an English girl masquerading," I remarked
facetiously. "What made you think her an American?"

"Oh, her general appearance and accent, I suppose."

"Probably she didn't say Barkley," observed Francesca cuttingly; "she
would have been sure to commit that sort of solecism."

"Why, don't you say Barkley in the States?"

"Certainly not; we never call them the States, and with us c-l-e-r-k
spells clerk, and B-e-r-k Berk."

"How very odd!" remarked Mr. Anstruther.

"No odder than your saying Bark, and not half as odd as your calling
it Albany," I interpolated, to help Francesca.

"Quite so," said Mr. Anstruther; "but how do you say Albany in
America?"

"Penelope and I allways call it Allbany," responded Francesca
nonsensically, "but Salemina, who has been much in England, always
calls it Albany."

This anecdote was the signal for Miss Ardmore to remark (apropos of
her own discrimination and the American accent) that hearing a lady
ask for a certain med'cine in a chemist's shop, she noted the
intonation, and inquired of the chemist, when the fair stranger had
retired, if she were not an American. "And she was!" exclaimed the
Honorable Elizabeth triumphantly. "And what makes it the more curious,
she had been over here twenty years, and of course spoke English quite
properly."

In avenging fancied insults, it is certainly more just to heap
punishment on the head of the real offen