he
seldom varied the formula. When she said something too audacious for
silent emotion, he called out, "Oh, I say!" If she advanced an opinion
too obviously acceptable, or asked a question upon some point where
it seemed to him there could not be two minds, he was ready with the
ironical note, "Well, rather!" At times she pressed her studies of his
character and her observations on his manner and appearance so far that
he was forced to protest, "You are so personal!" But these moments
were rare; for the most part, "Oh I say!" and "Well, rather!" perfectly
covered the ground. He did not generally mind her parody of his poverty
of phrase, but once, after she had repeated "Well rather!" and "Oh,
I say!" steadily at everything he said for the whole round of the
promenade they were making, he intimated that there were occasions when,
in his belief, a woman's abuse of the freedom generously allowed her sex
passed the point of words.

"And when it passes the point of words" she taunted him, "what do you
do?"

"You will see," he said, "if it ever does," and Lottie felt justified by
her inference that he was threatening to kiss her, in answering:

"And if I ever SEE, I will box your ears."

"Oh, I say!" he retorted. "I should like to have you try."

He had ideas of the rightful mastery of a man in all things, which
she promptly pronounced brutal, and when he declared that his father's
conduct towards his wife and children was based upon these ideas, she
affirmed the superiority of her own father's principles and behavior.
Mr. Pogis was too declared an admirer of Judge Kenton to question
his motives or method in anything, and he could only generalize, "The
Americans spoil their women."

"Well, their women are worth it," said Lottie, and after allowing the
paradox time to penetrate his intelligence, he cried out, in a glad
transport:

"Oh, I SAY!"

At the moment Boyne's intellectual seance with Miss Rasmith was
coming to an end. Lottie had tacitly invited Mr. Pogis to prolong the
comparison of English and American family life by stopping in front of
a couple of steamer-chairs, and confessing that she was tired to death.
They sat down, and he told her about his mother, whom, although his
father's subordinate, he seemed to be rather fonder of. He had some
elder brothers, most of them in the colonies, and he had himself been
out to America looking at something his father had found for him in
Buffalo.

"You ought to come