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288 Fool than Tom Fool knows, but I think I may congratulate you on your first attempt at the English-abroad conversation."

"Do you know, really," she said, "you did it so well that if I hadn't known who you were, I should have thought it was the real you. The felicitations are not all mine. But won't you tell me about Holland? That bit of yours about the hotel acquaintances was very brutal. I've heard heaps of people say that very thing. You just caught the tone. But Holland—"

"Well, this is Holland," said he; "but I saw more of it than this, and I'll tell you anything you like if you won't expect me to talk clever, and turn the phrase. That's a lost art, and I won't humiliate myself in trying to recover it. To begin with, Holland is flat."

"Don't be a geography book," Elizabeth laughed light-heartedly.

"The coinage is—"

"No, but seriously."

"Well, then," said he, and the talk lasted till the little steamer bumped and grated against the quay-side at Sluys.

When they had landed the two stood for a moment on the grass-grown quay in silence.