than to question any
one he had ever met with.

They walked on along the road for some minutes together, the stranger
admiring all the way the golden tresses of the laburnum and the rich
perfume of the lilac, and talking much as he went of the quaintness and
prettiness of the suburban houses. Philip thought them pretty, too
(or rather, important), but failed to see for his own part where the
quaintness came in. Nay, he took the imputation as rather a slur on so
respectable a neighbourhood: for to be quaint is to be picturesque, and
to be picturesque is to be old-fashioned. But the stranger's voice and
manner were so pleasant, almost so ingratiating, that Philip did
not care to differ from him on the abstract question of a qualifying
epithet. After all, there's nothing positively insulting in calling a
house quaint, though Philip would certainly have preferred, himself, to
hear the Eligible Family Residences of that Aristocratic Neighbourhood
described in auctioneering phrase as "imposing," "noble," "handsome," or
"important-looking."

Just before they reached Miss Blake's door, the Alien paused for a
second. He took out a loose handful of money, gold and silver together,
from his trouser pocket. "One more question," he said, with that
pleasant smile on his lips, "if you'll excuse my ignorance. Which of
these coins is a pound, now, and which is a sovereign?"

"Why, a pound IS a sovereign, of course," Philip answered briskly,
smiling the genuine British smile of unfeigned astonishment that anybody
should be ignorant of a minor detail in the kind of life he had
always lived among. To be sure, he would have asked himself with equal
simplicity what was the difference between a twenty-franc piece, a
napoleon, and a louis, or would have debated as to the precise numerical
relation between twenty-five cents and a quarter of a dollar; but then,
those are mere foreign coins, you see, which no fellow can be expected
to understand, unless he happens to have lived in the country they are
used in. The others are British and necessary to salvation. That
feeling is instinctive in the thoroughly provincial English nature. No
Englishman ever really grasps for himself the simple fact that England
is a foreign country to foreigners; if strangers happen to show
themselves ignorant of any petty matter in English life, he regards
their ignorance as silly and childish, not to be compared for a moment
to his own natural unfamiliarity with th