Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/298

286 Another phrase once banned by both.

The sun sparkled on the moving duckweed of the canal. The sky was blue overhead. Here and there a red-roofed farm showed among the green pastures. Ahead the avenues tapered away into distance, and met at the vanishing point. Elizabeth smiled for sheer pleasure at the sight of two little blue-smocked children solemnly staring at the boat as it passed. Then she glanced at him with an irritated frown. It was his turn to smile.

"You called the tune, my lady," he said to himself, "and it is you shall change it, not I."

"Foreign countries are very like England, are they not?" he said. "The same kind of trees, you know, and the same kind of cows, and—and everything. Even the canals are very like ours."

"The canal system," said Elizabeth instructively, "is the finest in the world."

"Adieu, Canal, canard, canaille" he quoted. They had always barred quotations in the old days.

"I don't understand Latin," said she. Then their eyes met, and he got up abruptly and