e 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 you 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 always 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 Honourable 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 offender than upon his neighbour,
and it is a trifle difficult to decide why Francesca should chastise Mr.
Macdonald for the good-humoured sins of Mr. Anstruther and Miss Ardmore;
yet she does so, nevertheless.

The history of these chastisements she recounts in the nightly half-hour
which she spends with me when I am endeavouring to compose myself for
sleep. Francesca is fluent at all times, but once seated on the foot of
my bed she becomes eloquent!

"It all began with his saying--"

This is her perennial introduction, and I respond as invariably, "What
began?"

"Oh, to-day's argument with Mr. Macdonald. It was a literary quarrel
this afternoon."

"'Fools rush in--'" I quoted.

"There is a good deal o