oining him, gave him a long account of the Indian Missions of the Church.
Unconscious of having done anything that might be regarded as eccentric,
Sir Robert was all affability, soon grew interested, asked a number of
questions as to the death-rate among the tribes, the prevalence of
smallpox and cholera among them, the spread of civilization, confirmed
nomadism, traces of Jewish rites, and so on, thanked him for a "very
profitable half-hour," and said he should send a little check to be
applied in any way he might see fit, obliterating thereby the last trace
of the previous prejudice. This, indeed, was replaced by something very
like enthusiasm when there came next day a slip of paper representing five
hundred dollars, also a note from the donor, saying that he should be glad
to know that some portion of the sum enclosed had gone to an industrial
school, if any such existed, where the young Indian women could learn to
boil a potato properly, and the use of brooms and pails and
scrubbing-brushes. "You must first clean them and then convert them: get
them into the bath-tub, and you can take them anywhere," said Sir Robert,
with great truth and perspicacity.

"One doesn't get such a dinner, except at a few great houses, outside of
London or Paris," Mrs. Sykes was pleased to say when it was over. "I have
found out that almost everything was ordered from New York; and a pretty
penny it must have cost. Not that this man cares. I dare say he is only
too glad to have the chance of entertaining me,--that is, us. I was sent
in with a waspish little man that turned suddenly crusty on my hands and
was an owl for the rest of the time; but I was rather glad to be able to
devote myself to my dinner for once."

Mrs. Sykes's escort had "turned crusty" because that lady, following her
instinct of ingratiation, had said to him, "All the gentry of this country
are in the South, aren't they? They don't live about here, do they?"--not
from a prejudice in favor of Southerners at all, as was proved when she
went to New Orleans later and promptly asked the first acquaintance she
made whether all the education was not at the North.

The week that followed was a very gay one, the Ketchums' friends in the
neighborhood and in Kalsing being most intent on hospitable thoughts and
providing something agreeable in the shape of an entertainment for every
night. Every moment of the day, too, of every day was filled up. It seemed
to Mrs. Ketchum that "t