Page:Penelope's Progress.djvu/232

218 "You always make so much noise with blank cartridges I wonder you ever bother about real shot," I remarked.

"Penelope, how can you abuse me when I am in trouble? Well, Mr. Macdonald was prating, as usual, about the antiquity of Scotland and its æons of stirring history. I am so weary of the venerableness of this country. How old will it have to be, I wonder, before it gets used to it? If it's the province of art to conceal art, it ought to be the province of age to conceal age, and it generally is. 'Everything doesn't improve with years,' I observed sententiously. "'For instance?' he inquired.

"Of course you know how that question affected me! How I do dislike an appetite for specific details! It is simply paralyzing to a good conversation. Do you remember that silly game in which some one points a stick at you and says, 'Beast, bird, or fish,—beast! and you have to name one while he counts ten? If a beast has been requested, you can think of one fish and two birds, but no beasts. If he says Fish,' all the beasts in the universe stalk through your memory, but not one finny, scaly, swimming thing! Well, that is the effect of 'For instance?' on my faculties. So I stumbled a bit, and succeeded in recalling, as objects which do not improve with age, mushrooms, women, and chickens, and he was obliged to agree with me, which nearly