“No, momma,” I was immediately compelled to exclaim, “you mustn’t look over my shoulder.  It is paralysing to the imagination.”

“Then I won’t, dear.  But oh, if you could only describe it as it is!  The ruined chateaux, tree-embosomed——­” Momma paused.

“The gray church spires, from which at eventide the Angelus comes pealing—­or stealing,” she continued.  “Perhaps ‘stealing’ is better.”

“Above all the poplars—­the poplars are very characteristic, dear.  And the women toilers in the sunset fields garnering up the golden grain.  You might exclaim, ‘Why are they always in blue?’ Have you got that down?”

“They were making hay,” poppa corrected.  “But I suppose the public won’t know the difference, any more than you did.”

Momma leaned forward, clasping her smelling-bottle, and looked out of the window with a smile of exaltation.

“The cows,” she went on, “the proud-legged Norman cows standing knee-deep in the quiet pools.  Have you got the cows down, dear?”

The Senator, at the other window, looked across disparagingly, hard at work on his beard.  He said nothing, but after a time abruptly thrust his hands in his pockets, and his feet out in front of him in a manner which expressed absolute dissent.  When momma said she thought she would try to get a little sleep he looked round observantly, and as soon as her slumber was sound and comfortable he beckoned to me.

“See here,” he said, not unkindly, argumentatively.  “About those cows.  In fact, about all these pointers your mother’s been giving you.  They’re all very nice and poetic—­I don’t want to run down momma’s ideas—­but they don’t strike me as original.  I won’t say I could put my finger on it, but I’m perfectly certain I’ve heard of the poplars and the women field labourers of Normandy somewhere before.  She doesn’t do it on purpose”—­the Senator inclined his head with deprecation toward the sleeping form opposite, and lowered his voice—­“and I don’t know that I’d mention it to you under any other circumstances, but momma’s a fearful plagiarist.  She doesn’t hesitate anywhere.  I’ve known her do it to William Shakespeare and the Book of Job, let alone modern authors.  In dealing with her suggestions you want to be very careful.  Otherwise momma’ll get you into trouble.”

I nodded with affectionate consideration.  “I’ll make a note of what you say, Senator,” I replied, and immediately, from motives of delicacy, we changed the subject.  As we talked, poppa told me in confidence how much he expected of the democratic idea in Paris.  He said that even the short time we had spent in England was enough to enable him to detect the subserviency of the lower classes there and to resent it, as a man and a brother.  He spoke sadly and somewhat bitterly of the manners of the brother man who shaved him, which he found unjustifiably affable, and of the inexcusable abasement of a British railway porter if you gave