out any note of wonder or
surprise in his voice. "Are all the dwellers there like the gods and
angels our children read about in the old legends?"

"Gods and angels!" laughed Zaidie. "There, Lenox, there's a compliment
for you. I really think we ought to be as civil to his Royal Highness
after that as possible." Then she went on, addressing the Martian, "No,
we are not all gods and angels on earth. There are no gods and very few
angels. In fact there are none except those which exist in the fancy of
certain prejudiced persons. But that doesn't matter, at least not just
now," she continued with American directness. "What we want to know just
now is, why you speak English, and what sort of a world this Mars is?"

The Martian evidently only understood the most direct essentials of her
speech. He saw that she asked two questions, and he answered them.

"Speak English?" he replied, with a little shake of his huge head. "We
know not English, but there is no other speech. There is only ours.
Cycles ago there were other speeches here, but those who spoke them were
killed. It was inconvenient. One speech for a world is best."

"I see what he means," said Redgrave, looking towards Zaidie. "The
Martian people have developed along practically the same lines as we are
doing, but they have done it faster and got a long way ahead of us. We
are finding out that the speech we call English is the shortest and most
convenient. The Martians found it out long ago and killed everybody who
spoke anything else. After all, what we call speech is only the
translation of thoughts into sounds. These people have been thinking for
ages with the same sort of brains as ours, and they've translated their
thoughts into the same sounds. What we call English they, I daresay,
call Martian, and that's all there is in it that I can see."

"Of course," laughed Zaidie. "Wonderful until you know how, eh? Like
most things. Still I must say that our friend here speaks English
something like a phonograph, and if he'll excuse me saying so, which of
course he will, he doesn't seem to have much more human nature about
him."

"I'm not quite so sure on that point," said Redgrave, "but----"

"Oh, never mind about that now!" she interrupted, and then, turning
towards the Martian, who had been listening intently as though he was
trying to make sense out of what they had been saying, she went on
speaking slowly and very plainly----

"Tell me, sir, if you please, do