sly, "think what this
place was like--all marsh, with the sea right alongside; not four miles
off as it is now. Why, you couldn't base so much as a calculation on
it!"

"I must say," said Mrs. Portheris in severe surprise, "I knew that
America had made great advances in the world of invention, but I did not
expect to find what looks much like jealousy of the achievements of an
older civilisation."

The Senator looked at his aunt, then he put his hat further back on his
head and cleared his throat. I prepared for the worst, and the worst
would undoubtedly have come if Dicky Dod had not suddenly remembered
having seen a man with a foreign telegram looking for somebody in the
Cathedral.

"It's a feat!" reiterated Mrs. Portheris as the Senator left us in
pursuit of the man with the telegram.

"It's fourteen feet," cried the Senator from a safe distance, "out of
the perpendicular!" and left us to take the consequences.

CHAPTER X.

When momma reported to me Mrs. Portheris's proposition that we should
make the rest of our Continental trip as one undivided party, I found it
difficult to understand.

"These sudden changes of temperature," I remarked, "are trying to the
constitution. Why this desire for the society of three unabashed
Americanisms like ourselves?"

"That's just what I wondered," said momma. "For you can _see_ that she
is full of insular prejudice against our great country. She makes no
attempt to disguise it."

"She never did," I assented.

"She said it seemed so extraordinary--quite providential--meeting
relatives abroad in this way," momma continued, "and she thought we
ought to follow it up."

"Are we going to?" I inquired.

"My goodness gracious no, love! There are some things my nerves cannot
stand the strain of, and one of them is your poppa's Aunt Caroline. The
Senator smoothed it over. He said he was sure we were very much
obliged, but our time was limited, and he thought we could get around
faster alone."

"Well," I said, "I do not understand it, unless Dicky has persuaded her
that poppa is to be our next ambassador to St. James's."

"She was too silly about Dicky," said momma. "She said she really was
afraid, before you appeared, that young Mr. Dod was conceiving an
attachment for her Isabel, whose affections lay _quite_ in another
direction; but now her mind was entirely at rest. I don't remember her
words, she uses so many, but she was trying to hint that poor Dicky was
an