“He is rather a good sort in some ways, but a very ignorant man.  I showed him some of my specimens the other day, and he thought them granitic, when they were really Silurian mica schist of some kind,” put in Mrs. Sykes, who never could bear unqualified praise.  “Still, on the whole, the Americans are less ignorant than might have been expected.”

“I consider Mr. Ketchum a most kind, gentlemanly, sociable, clever man,” said Miss Noel, with an emphatic nod of her head to each adjective, “geology or no geology.  And I must say that it is very ungrateful of you to speak of him so sneeringly always.”

Sir Robert only waited to write the usual batch of letters, including a last appeal to the editor of the “Columbia Eagle” to know whether he intended to apologize for and publicly retract a certain article, and asking “whether it was possible that any considerable or respectable portion of the Americans could be so arbitrary, illiberal, and exclusive as to wish to exclude the English from America.”  This done, he left for Canada with his relatives.  With his stay there we have nothing to do.  It consumed six weeks of exhaustive travel and study of Canadian conditions and resources, resulting ultimately in the conclusion that Manitoba was not the place he was looking for.  The ladies, who had been left in Montreal, were then taken for a short tour through the country, which they all enjoyed, after which Sir Robert asked Miss Noel whether she would be willing to take Ethel back to Niagara and wait there a fortnight, or perhaps a little longer, while he and Mr. Heathcote came back by way of New England and from there went down into Maryland and Virginia, where, according to “a member of the Canadian Parliament,” lands were to be had for a song.

“A fortnight?  I could spend a twelve-month there,” exclaimed she.  “Had it not been that I was ashamed to insist upon being let off this journey, I should have stopped there as it was.”

To Niagara the aunt and niece and Parsons went, as agreed, and there they found Mr. Bates wandering languidly about the place in chronic discontent with everything for not being something else.  He had burned a good deal of incense on Ethel’s shrine when she was at Kalsing, and now hailed their advent with some approach to enthusiasm, and attached himself to their suite, vice Captain Kendall, retired.  He liked to be seen with them, thought the views from the Canadian side were “deucedly fine,” was cruelly affected by the advertisements in the neighborhood, which he denounced as “dreadfully American,” trickled out much feeble criticism of and acid comment on his surroundings, gave utterance to fervent wishes that he was “abrard,” and in his own unpleasant way gave Ethel to understand that she might make a fellow-countryman happy by becoming Mrs. Samuel Bates if she liked to avail herself of a golden opportunity.  “I would live in England, you know.  I am really far more at home there than here,” said the expatriated suitor.  “I have been taken for an Englishman as often as three times in one week, do you know.  Curious, isn’t it?  I ought to be down in Kent now, visiting Lady Simpson, a great friend of mine, who has asked me there again and again.  You would like her if you knew her.  She is quite the great lady down there.”