Lottie, walking the deck, had not thought of bidding Mr. Pogis good-night.  She had asked him half a dozen times how late it was, and when he answered, had said as often that she knew better, and she was going below in another minute.  But she stayed, and the flow of her conversation supplied him with occasion for the remarks of which he seldom varied the formula.  When she said something too audacious for silent emotion, he called out, “Oh, I say!” If she advanced an opinion too obviously acceptable, or asked a question upon some point where it seemed to him there could not be two minds, he was ready with the ironical note, “Well, rather!” At times she pressed her studies of his character and her observations on his manner and appearance so far that he was forced to protest, “You are so personal!” But these moments were rare; for the most part, “Oh I say!” and “Well, rather!” perfectly covered the ground.  He did not generally mind her parody of his poverty of phrase, but once, after she had repeated “Well rather!” and “Oh, I say!” steadily at everything he said for the whole round of the promenade they were making, he intimated that there were occasions when, in his belief, a woman’s abuse of the freedom generously allowed her sex passed the point of words.

“And when it passes the point of words” she taunted him, “what do you do?”

“You will see,” he said, “if it ever does,” and Lottie felt justified by her inference that he was threatening to kiss her, in answering: 

“And if I ever see, I will box your ears.”

“Oh, I say!” he retorted.  “I should like to have you try.”

He had ideas of the rightful mastery of a man in all things, which she promptly pronounced brutal, and when he declared that his father’s conduct towards his wife and children was based upon these ideas, she affirmed the superiority of her own father’s principles and behavior.  Mr. Pogis was too declared an admirer of Judge Kenton to question his motives or method in anything, and he could only generalize, “The Americans spoil their women.”

“Well, their women are worth it,” said Lottie, and after allowing the paradox time to penetrate his intelligence, he cried out, in a glad transport: 

“Oh, I say!”

At the moment Boyne’s intellectual seance with Miss Rasmith was coming to an end.  Lottie had tacitly invited Mr. Pogis to prolong the comparison of English and American family life by stopping in front of a couple of steamer-chairs, and confessing that she was tired to death.  They sat down, and he told her about his mother, whom, although his father’s subordinate, he seemed to be rather fonder of.  He had some elder brothers, most of them in the colonies, and he had himself been out to America looking at something his father had found for him in Buffalo.

“You ought to come to Tuskingum,” said Lottie.

“Is that a large place?” Mr. Pogis asked.  “As large as Buffalo?”