d, it is these architectural plans and diagrams. I am going to pin
it to the wall and ask the Reverend Ronald which way it goes."

"Do you mean that he will call upon us?" we cried in concert.

"He asked if he might come and continue our 'stimulating'
conversation, and as Lady Baird was standing by I could hardly say no.
I am sure of one thing: that before I finish with him I will widen his
horizon so that he will be able to see something beside Scotland and
his little insignificant Fifeshire parish! I told him our country
parishes in America were ten times as large as his. He said he had
heard that they covered a good deal of territory, and that the
ministers' salaries were sometimes paid in pork and potatoes. That
shows you the style of his retorts!"

"I really cannot decide which of you was the more disagreeable," said
Salemina; "if he calls, I shall not remain in the room."

"I wouldn't gratify him by staying out," retorted Francesca. "He is
extremely good for the circulation; I think I was never so warm in my
life as when I talked with him; as physical exercise he is equal to
bicycling. The bridge man is coming to call, too. I gave him a diagram
of Breadalbane Terrace, and a plan of the hall and staircase, on my
dinner-card. He was distinctly ungrateful; in fact, he remarked that
he had been born in this very house, but would not trust himself to
find his way upstairs with my plan as a guide. He also said the
American vocabulary was vastly amusing, so picturesque, unstudied, and
fresh."

"That was nice, surely," I interpolated.

"You know perfectly well that it was an insult."

"Francesca is very like the young man," laughed Salemina, "who,
whenever he engaged in controversy, seemed to take off his flesh and
sit in his nerves."

"I'm not supersensitive," replied Francesca, "but when one's
vocabulary is called picturesque by a Britisher, one always knows he
is thinking of cowboys and broncos. However, I shifted the weight into
the other scale by answering, 'Thank you. And your phraseology is just
as unusual to us.' 'Indeed?' he said with some surprise. 'I supposed
our method of expression very sedate and uneventful.' 'Not at all,' I
returned, 'when you say, as you did a moment ago, that you never eat
potato to your fish.' 'But I do not,' he urged obtusely. 'Very
likely,' I argued, 'but the fact is not of so much importance as the
preposition. Now I eat potato _with_ my fish.' 'You make a mistake,'
he said,