f nonsense in that old saw," she interrupted; "at
all events, the most foolish fools I have ever known stayed still and
didn't do anything. Rushing shows a certain movement of the mind,
even if it is in the wrong direction. However, Mr. Macdonald is both
opinionated and dogmatic, but his worst enemy could never call him a
fool."

"I didn't allude to Mr. Macdonald."

"Don't you suppose I know to whom you alluded, dear? Is not your style
so simple, frank, and direct that a wayfaring girl can read it and not
err therein? No, I am not sitting on your feet, and it is not time to go
to sleep; I wonder you do not tire of making those futile protests. As a
matter of fact, we began this literary discussion yesterday morning,
but were interrupted; and knowing that it was sure to come up again,
I prepared for it with Salemina. She furnished the ammunition, so to
speak, and I fired the guns."

"You always make so much noise with blank cartridges I wonder you ever
bother about real shot," I remarked.

"Penelope, how can you abuse me when I am in trouble? Well, Mr.
Macdonald was prating, as usual, about the antiquity of Scotland and its
aeons of stirring history. I am so weary of the venerableness of this
country. How old will it have to be, I wonder, before it gets used
to it? If it's the province of art to conceal art, it ought to be the
province of age to conceal age, and it generally is. 'Everything doesn't
improve with years,' I observed sententiously.

"'For instance?' he inquired.

"Of course you know how that question affected me! How I do dislike
an appetite for specific details! It is simply paralysing to a good
conversation. Do you remember that silly game in which some one points
a stick at you and says, 'Beast, bird, or fish,--BEAST!' and you have
to name one while he counts ten? If a beast has been requested, you can
think of one fish and two birds, but no beast. If he says 'FISH,' all
the beasts in the universe stalk through your memory, but not one finny,
sealy, swimming thing! Well, that is the effect of 'For instance?' on my
faculties. So I stumbled a bit, and succeeded in recalling, as objects
which do not improve with age, mushrooms, women, and chickens, and he
was obliged to agree with me, which nearly killed him. Then I said that
although America is so fresh and blooming that people persist in calling
it young, it is much older than it appears to the superficial eye. There
is no real propriety in dating u