hand.

"How do you do?" said he.

"It's a fine day," said she.

"Very," said he.

"Shall I make you a confidence?" she asked.

"Do," he answered.

"Are you sure I can trust you?" She scanned his face dubiously.

"Try it and see," he urged.

"Well, then, if you must know, I was thirsting to take a table and call
for coffee; but having no man at hand to chaperon me, I dared not."

"Je vous en prie," cried Peter, with a gesture of gallantry; and he
led her to one of the round marble tables. "Due caffe," he said to the
brilliant creature (chains, buckles, ear-rings, of silver filigree,
and head-dress and apron of flame-red silk) who came to learn their
pleasure.

"Softly, softly," put in Mrs. O'Donovan Florence. "Not a drop of
coffee for me. An orange-sherbet, if you please. Coffee was a figure of
speech--a generic term for light refreshments."

Peter laughed, and amended his order.

"Do you see those three innocent darlings playing together, under the
eye of their governess, by the Wellingtonia yonder?" enquired the lady.

"The little girl in white and the two boys?" asked Peter.

"Precisely," said she. "Such as they are, they're me own."

"Really?" he responded, in the tone of profound and sympathetic interest
we are apt to affect when parents begin about their children.

"I give you my word for it," she assured him. "But I mention the fact,
not in a spirit of boastfulness, but merely to show you that I 'm not
entirely alone and unprotected. There's an American at our hotel, by the
bye, who goes up and down telling every one who'll listen that it ought
to be Washingtonia, and declaiming with tears in his eyes against the
arrogance of the English in changing Washington to Wellington. As he's
a respectable-looking man with grown-up daughters, I should think very
likely he's right."

"Very likely," said Peter. "It's an American tree, is n't it?"

"Whether it is n't or whether it is," said she, "one thing is
undeniable: you English are the coldest-blooded animals south of the
Arctic Circle."

"Oh--? Are we?" he doubted.

"You are that," she affirmed, with sorrowing emphasis.

"Ah, well," he reflected, "the temperature of our blood does n't matter.
We're, at any rate, notoriously warm-hearted."

"Are you indeed?" she exclaimed. "If you are, it's a mighty quiet kind
of notoriety, let me tell you, and a mighty cold kind of warmth."

Peter laughed.

"You're all for prudence and expediency. You're th