They walked on along the road for some minutes together, the stranger admiring all the way the golden tresses of the laburnum and the rich perfume of the lilac, and talking much as he went of the quaintness and prettiness of the suburban houses.  Philip thought them pretty, too (or rather, important), but failed to see for his own part where the quaintness came in.  Nay, he took the imputation as rather a slur on so respectable a neighbourhood:  for to be quaint is to be picturesque, and to be picturesque is to be old-fashioned.  But the stranger’s voice and manner were so pleasant, almost so ingratiating, that Philip did not care to differ from him on the abstract question of a qualifying epithet.  After all, there’s nothing positively insulting in calling a house quaint, though Philip would certainly have preferred, himself, to hear the Eligible Family Residences of that Aristocratic Neighbourhood described in auctioneering phrase as “imposing,” “noble,” “handsome,” or “important-looking.”

Just before they reached Miss Blake’s door, the Alien paused for a second.  He took out a loose handful of money, gold and silver together, from his trouser pocket.  “One more question,” he said, with that pleasant smile on his lips, “if you’ll excuse my ignorance.  Which of these coins is a pound, now, and which is a sovereign?”

“Why, a pound is a sovereign, of course,” Philip answered briskly, smiling the genuine British smile of unfeigned astonishment that anybody should be ignorant of a minor detail in the kind of life he had always lived among.  To be sure, he would have asked himself with equal simplicity what was the difference between a twenty-franc piece, a napoleon, and a louis, or would have debated as to the precise numerical relation between twenty-five cents and a quarter of a dollar; but then, those are mere foreign coins, you see, which no fellow can be expected to understand, unless he happens to have lived in the country they are used in.  The others are British and necessary to salvation.  That feeling is instinctive in the thoroughly provincial English nature.  No Englishman ever really grasps for himself the simple fact that England is a foreign country to foreigners; if strangers happen to show themselves ignorant of any petty matter in English life, he regards their ignorance as silly and childish, not to be compared for a moment to his own natural unfamiliarity with the absurd practices of foreign nations.

The Alien, indeed, seemed to have learned beforehand this curious peculiarity of the limited English intellect; for he blushed slightly as he replied, “I know your currency, as a matter of arithmetic, of course:  twelve pence make one shilling; twenty shillings make one pound—­”

“Of course,” Philip echoed in a tone of perfect conviction; it would never have occurred to him to doubt for a moment that everybody knew intuitively those beggarly elements of the inspired British monetary system.