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 first time with an eager inexperience I should call quite perfect."

"That may be," Orbison said. "But surely even the most inexperienced mother would make some excuse to call her daughter away from two such young men as that."

"No; she wouldn't," the American returned. "Mrs. Ambler would never call her daughter away."

"You don't mean the mother might encourage your Saracen friends?"

"No: but she wouldn't be at all alarmed about them and probably thinks them 'delightfully foreign.' Besides, she's an American mother and far too well trained ever to call her daughter away."

"I dare say," Orbison murmured discontentedly. "But after all, a girl of twenty-one is still something of a child, and if she has a mother trained not to interfere—well, I hope your patriotic confidence that an American girl is equal to anything may be warranted, Eugene."

He paused, listening to the cheerful sound of Miss Ambler's chatter. She was eagerly hurrying forth upon the air an overcrowding multitude of words, emphasizing most of them, yet breaking them continually with interjected syllables of laughter, and