met him," returned the
girl nonchalantly; "that is, he parted with none of it this evening.
He was incorrigibly stiff and rude, and oh! so Scotch! I believe if
one punctured him with a hat-pin, oatmeal would fly into the air!"

"Doubtless you acquainted him, early in the evening, with the
immeasurable advantages of our sleeping-car system, the superiority of
our fast-running elevators, and the height of our buildings?" observed
Salemina.

"I mentioned them," Francesca answered evasively.

"You naturally inveighed against the Scotch climate?"

"Oh, I alluded to it; but only when he said that our hot summers must
be insufferable."

"I suppose you repeated the remark you made at luncheon, that the
ladies you had seen in Princes Street were excessively plain?"

"Yes, I did!" she replied hotly; "but that was because he said that
American girls generally looked bloodless and frail. He asked if it
were really true that they ate chalk and slate pencils. Wasn't that
unendurable? I answered that those were the chief solid articles of
food, but that after their complexions were established, so to speak,
their parents often allowed them pickles and native claret to vary the
diet."

"What did he say to that?" I asked.

"Oh, he said, 'Quite so, quite so;' that was his invariable response
to all my witticisms. Then when I told him casually that the shops
looked very small and dark and stuffy here, and that there were not as
many tartans and plaids in the windows as we had expected, he remarked
that as to the latter point, the American season had not opened yet!
Presently he asserted that no royal city in Europe could boast ten
centuries of such glorious and stirring history as Edinburgh. I said
it did not appear to be stirring much at present, and that everything
in Scotland seemed a little slow to an American; that he could have no
idea of push or enterprise until he visited a city like Chicago. He
retorted that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint
of the ledger and the counting-house; that it was Weimar without a
Goethe, Boston without its twang!"

"Incredible!" cried Salemina, deeply wounded in her local pride. "He
never could have said 'twang' unless you had tried him beyond
measure!"

"I dare say I did; he is easily tried," returned Francesca. "I asked
him, sarcastically, if he had ever been in Boston. 'No,' he said, 'it
is not necessary to _go_ there! And while we are discussing these
matters,' he