e river.

"This book explains everything except what you want to know!" she
complained. "Why can't it tell what Saint Joris is in England? He must
be some saint there, and I saw his name over that nice little inn with
the garden at Alphen."

"St. George," I said; though she had not asked me.

"I might have known," she sighed, "and no doubt the Dutch have put the
dragon into their language too, stuck full of those "i's" and "j's",
that make me feel whenever I see them in print as if my hair were done
up too tight, or my teeth were sizes too large for my mouth. 'Rijn
wijn,' for instance. Who would think that meant something sleek and
pleasant, like Rhine wine?"

"Why not?" I asked. "We pronounce it almost the same."

"That's because you haven't got the courage of your convictions. You
fling the 'i's' and 'j's' about, and then pretend they're not there."

"Why, don't you see that they're only 'y's'?" I protested, and really
it does appear strange that to foreign eyes they can look, when side by
side, like separate letters.

But the Chaperon stopped us. She said that we could find enough to do
minding our p's and q's in life, without quarreling over "i's" and
"j's"; so the argument ended, and the girls turned their attention to
making tea.

They did it charmingly, juggling with the contents of a tea-basket which
Starr brought on deck and placed on a little folding-table. Whether Miss
Van Buren forgot me or not, in dealing out cups when tea was made, at
all events she pretended to, and reminded by her stepsister, gave me tea
without sugar. Then, begged for one lump, she absentmindedly dropped in
three, while talking with Starr. Robert would certainly have been
tempted to shake her if he had been present at that tea-party.

[Illustration: _She absentmindedly dropped in three, while talking to
Starr_]

XII

My mother sent me to Oxford, because she thought that she could take no
intelligent interest in any young man if he had not had his four years
at Oxford or Cambridge. But afterwards, through loyalty to my
fatherland, I gave myself two at the University of Leiden; and as the
rooms I lived in there hold memories of Oliver Goldsmith, I've kept them
on ever since. I was twenty-four when I said good-by to Leiden, and for
the five after-years the rooms have been lent to a cousin, studying for
his degree as a learned doctor of law. Now, I knew it was close upon the
time for him to take his degree, and I hoped