e couldn't
have been more punctilious. And with an accent, Jerusalem! like a
northeaster off the Banks! But the feed was in good taste, and he only a
mathematical instrument maker, on about twelve hundred dollars a year!"

"You seem to know all about him," said the consul smilingly.

"Not so much as he does about me," returned Gray, with a half perplexed
face; "for he saw enough to admonish me about my extravagance, and even
to intimate that that rascal Saunderson, my steward, was imposing on me.
SHE took me to task, too, for not laying the yacht up on Sunday that the
men could go 'to kirk,' and for swearing at a bargeman who ran across
our bows. It's their perfect simplicity and sincerity in all this that
gets me! You'd have thought that the old man was my guardian, and the
daughter my aunt." After a pause he uttered a reminiscent laugh. "She
thought we ate and drank too much on the yacht, and wondered what we
could find to do all day. All this, you know, in the gentlest, caressing
sort of voice, as if she was really concerned, like one's own sister.
Well, not exactly like mine"--he interrupted himself grimly--"but, hang
it all, you know what I mean. You know that our girls over there haven't
got THAT trick of voice. Too much self-assertion, I reckon; things made
too easy for them by us men. Habit of race, I dare say." He laughed a
little. "Why, I mislaid my glove when I was coming away, and it was as
good as a play to hear her commiserating and sympathizing, and hunting
for it as if it were a lost baby."

"But you've seen Scotch girls before this," said the consul. "There were
Lady Glairn's daughters, whom you took on a cruise."

"Yes, but the swell Scotch all imitate the English, as everybody else
does, for the matter of that, our girls included; and they're all alike.
Society makes 'em fit in together like tongued and grooved planks that
will take any amount of holy-stoning and polish. It's like dropping into
a dead calm, with every rope and spar that you know already reflected
back from the smooth water upon you. It's mighty pretty, but it isn't
getting on, you know." After a pause he added: "I asked them to take a
little holiday cruise with me."

"And they declined," interrupted the consul.

Gray glanced at him quickly.

"Well, yes; that's all right enough. They don't know me, you see, but
they do know you; and the fact is, I was thinking that as you're our
consul here, don't you see, and sort of responsibl