onth's
vacation--two weeks on board ship, two on land. Now you, I suppose,
don't have to count your days? You cross every year. I can't see, for
my part, what business the assistant editor of a magazine has abroad."

"Oh, we make a specialty of articles from notorieties over there;
statesmen, scientific fellows, or people with titles. I expect to
capture a paper from Lorne and some sketches by the Princess Beatrice
this time."

"Lorne? It throws you into contact with that sort of folk, eh?" said
the doctor, looking at him enviously. "How do they strike you, Jem?"

"Well," said Perry importantly, "well-bred people are the same the
world over. I only see them in a business way, of course, but one can
judge. Their voices are better than ours, but as to looks--no! It's
queer, but American women--the wives and daughters of saddlers or
farmers, perhaps--have more often the patrician look than English
duchesses. Now there, for example," warming to the subject, "that
woman to whom you bowed just now, the middle-aged one in blue cloth.
Some Mrs. Smith or Pratt, probably. A homely woman, but there is a
distinction in her face, a certain surety of good breeding, which is
lacking in the heavy-jawed English royalties."

"Yes; that is a friend of mine," said Watts.

"She is a Mrs. Waldeaux from Wier, in Delaware. You could hardly call
her a typical American woman. Old French emigre family. Probably
better blood than the Coburgs a few generations back. That priggish
young fellow is her son. Going to be an Episcopalian minister."

Mr. Perry surveyed his friend's friends good-humoredly. "Brand new
rugs and cushions," he said. "First voyage. Heavens! I wish it were
my first voyage, and that I had their appetite for Europe."

"You might as well ask for your relish of the bread and butter of your
youth," said Watts.

The two men leaned lazily against the bulwark watching the other
passengers who were squabbling about trunks.

Mr. Perry suddenly stood upright as a group of women passed.

"Do you know who that girl is?" he said eagerly. "The one who looked
back at us over her shoulder."

"No. They are only a lot of school-girls, personally conducted. That
is the teacher in front." "Of course, I see that. But the short, dark
one--surely I know that woman."

The doctor looked after her. "She looks like a dog turning into a
human being," he said leisurely. "One often sees such cases of
arrested evolution