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 down," he said, and as they bowed in a manner a little suggesting that of the young Hyacinthe, he presented them informally. "Mrs. Mummero, it's a couple of Eastern gentlemen I been talkin' to a little, off and on. Easterners are likely to be kind of frozen-face until you get to know 'em, Mrs. Mummero; their climate makes 'em suspicious; but after they find out you aren't goin' to steal their shirts off of 'em they're just the same kind of human beings as anybody else. You been over in God's country quite some little time, Mrs. Mummero?"

"You mean" she began, somewhat blankly; then she understood, and laughed. "Oh, in America? Only three months."

"Just for pleasure, I expect," he remarked, nodding. "Well, I wish I could speak French as well as you do English; I don't hardly speak it at all—just 'polly voo frossy' and 'nix ferstay'; that's about all I know. How 'n the world you ever pick up so much of the language in that little time?"

"Oh, no," she protested. "I have been often in England to stay a long while there, and when I was a little girl I had an English governess. Yet even still I make mistakes in my English sometimes, I am sure."