the Laurentian littoral, Ontario Scots, Americans, Scandinavians,
Teutons, Magyars, Slavs. The English element's barely strong enough to
temper the mixture; the land's too wide and the people too varied for
British traditions to bind. When the cooling amalgam's run out it will be
into a fresh mold."

"One made in Pennsylvania, or wherever the American foundries are?"

"They run the one you have in mind at Washington. You understand things a
good deal better than many people I've talked to here; but you're not
right yet. If Canadians deliberately chose the American mold because it
was American, a number of us would kick; but the cause is a bigger one
than that. From Texas to Athabasca, from Florida to Labrador, pretty much
the same elemental forces are fanning the melting fires. We have the same
human raw material; we've much the same problems to tackle; the
conditions are, or soon will be, pretty similar. It's only natural that
the result should be more or less identical. I've said nothing yet about
our commercial and social relations with our neighbors."

"But doesn't England count?"

"Morally, yes. It's your part to keep our respect and show us a clean
lead."

"After all," she rejoined, "you, in particular, are essentially English
by connection with the part of the country you're now staying in."

He smiled curiously.

"So you or Nasmyth have been tracing up the family!"

"No," she replied with a little sharpness. "Why should I have done so? Of
course, we knew the name; and you have relations living at no great
distance. I understand Nasmyth got a hint that they would be glad to
receive you."

"Let it go at that," he answered. "My father was cast out because he
dared to think for himself and my mother was Canadian born. I'm a unit in
the new nation; one of the rank and file."

She considered this for a moment or two. It was hardly an English point
of view, but--for his family had long been one of station--there was a
hint of pride that struck her as rather fine about this renunciation. It
was a risky thing to insist on being taken at one's intrinsic value,
stripped of all accidental associations that might enhance it, but she
thought he need not shrink from the hazard. Now and then he spoke with
slightly injudicious candor, and sometimes too vehemently, but in
essential matters he displayed an admirable delicacy of feeling and she
recognized in him a sterling sense of honor.

"I've broken loose again and