Page:Penelope's Progress.djvu/230

216 "How very odd!" remarked Mr. Anstruther.

"No odder than your saying Bark, and not half as odd as your calling it Ǎlbany," I interpolated, to help Francesca.

"Quite so," said Mr. Anstruther; "but how do you say Ǎlbany in America?" "Penelope and I allways call it Allbany," responded Francesca nonsensically, "but Salemina, who has been much in England, ălways calls it Ǎlbany."

This anecdote was the signal for Miss Ardmore to remark (apropos of her own discrimination and the American accent) that hearing a lady ask for a certain med'cine in a chemist's shop, she noted the intonation, and inquired of the chemist, when the fair stranger had retired, if she were not an American. "And she was!" exclaimed the Honorable Elizabeth triumphantly. "And what makes it the more curious, she had been over here twenty years, and of course spoke English quite properly."

In avenging fancied insults, it is certainly more just to heap punishment on the head of the real offender than upon his neighbor, and it is a trifle difficult to decide why Francesca should chastise Mr. Macdonald for the good-humored sins of Mr. Anstruther and Miss Ardmore; yet she does so, nevertheless.

The history of these chastisements she recounts in the nightly half-hour which she spends