“We are quite willing,” said the Misses Bingham, “to exchange our seats in the coach for yours in the special carriage, if that arrangement suits you.”

“Bon!” interposed the guide, “and opposite there is one other place if that fat gentleman will squeeze himself a little—­eh?”

“Come along!” said the fat gentleman equably.

“But I couldn’t think of depriving you ladies.”

“Sir,” said one Miss Bingham, “it is no deprivation.”

“We should prefer it,” added the other Miss Bingham.  They spoke with decision; one saw that they had not reached middle age without knowing their own minds all the way.

“To tell the truth,” added the Miss Bingham without the eye-glass in a low voice, “we don’t think we can stand it.”

“I don’t precisely take you, madam,” said the Senator politely.

“I’m an American,” she continued.

Poppa bowed.  “I should have known you for a daughter of the Stars and Stripes anywhere,” he said in his most complimentary tone.

Miss Bingham looked disconcerted for an instant and went on.  “My great grandfather was A.D.C. to General Washington.  I’ve got that much reason to be loyal.”

“There couldn’t have been many such officers,” the Senator agreed.

“But when I go abroad I don’t want the whole of the United States to come with me.”

“It takes the gilt off getting back for you?” suggested poppa a little stiffly.

Miss Bingham failed to take the hint.  “We find Europe infested with Americans,” she continued.  “It disturbs one’s impressions so.  And the travelling American invariably belongs to the very least desirable class.”

“Now I shouldn’t have thought so,” said the Senator, with intentional humour.  But it was lost upon Miss Bingham.

“Well, if you like them,” said the other one, “you’d better go in the coach.”

The Senator lifted his hat.  “Madam,” he said, “I thank you for giving to me and mine the privilege of visiting a very questionable scene of the past in the very best society of the present.”

And as the guide was perspiring more and more impatiently, we got in.

For some moments the Senator sat in silence, reflecting upon this sentiment, with an occasionally heaving breast.  Circumstances forbade his talking about it, but he cast an eye full of criticism upon the fiacre rolling along far in the rear, and remarked, with a fervor most unusual, that he hoped they liked our dust.  We certainly made a great deal of it.  Momma and I, looking at our fellow travellers, at once decided that the Misses Bingham had been a little hasty.  The fat gentleman, who wore a straw hat very far back, and meant to enjoy himself, was certainly our fellow-citizen.  So was his wife, and brother-in-law.  So were a bride and bridegroom on the box seat—­nothing less than the best of everything for an American honeymoon—­and so was a solitary man with a short cut bristly beard,