excitedly, but sank down again.

"You think, sir," insisted John, to the Englishman's calmly averted
face, "that being in a free country--" he dashed off Shotwell's
remonstrant hand.

"'Tain't a free country at all," said the Briton to the outer landscape.
"There's hardly a corner in Europe but's freer."

"Ireland, for instance," sneered John.

"Ireland be damned," responded the foreigner, still still looking out
the window. "Go tell your nurse to give you some bread and butter."

John leaped and swept the air with his open palm. Gamble's clutch half
arrested it in front, Shotwell hindered it from behind, neither quite
stopped it.

"Did he slap him?" eagerly asked a dozen men standing on the seats.

"He barely touched him," was the disappointed reply of one.

"Thank the Lawd faw evm that little!" responded another.

Shotwell pulled March away, Halliday following. Near the rear door----

"Johnnie," began the General, with an air of complete digression, but at
the woebegone look that came into the young man's face, the old soldier
burst into a laugh. John whisked around to the door and stood looking
out, though seeing nothing, bitter in the thought that not for the
Englishman's own sake, but for the sake of the British capital coveted
by Suez, a gentleman and a Rosemonter was forbidden to pay him the price
of his insolence.

"I'd like to pass," presently said someone behind him. He started, and
Gamble went by.

"May I detain you a moment, sir?" said John.

The president frowned. "What is it?"

"In our passage of words just now--I was wrong."

"Yes, you were. What of it?"

"I regret it."

"I can't use your regrets," said the railroad man. He moved to go. "If
you want to see me about----"

John smiled. "No, sir, I'd rather never set eyes on you again."

As the Westerner's fat back passed into the farther coach his response
came----

"What you want ain't manners, it's gumption." The door slammed for
emphasis.

March presently followed, full of shame and indignation and those
unutterable wailings with which youth, so often, has to be born again
into manhood. Gamble had rejoined the Garnet group. John bowed affably
to all, smiled to Fannie and passed. Garnet still sat with Mrs. Proudfit
behind the others, and John, as he went by, was, for some cause supplied
by this pair, startled, angered anew, and for the time being benumbed by
conflicting emotions. He found his mother still talking joyously with