“Though they’re singularly awkward units of value for any one accustomed to a decimal coinage:  so unreasonable and illogical,” the stranger continued blandly, turning over the various pieces with a dubious air of distrust and uncertainty.

“I beg your pardon,” Philip said, drawing himself up very stiff, and scarcely able to believe his ears (he was an official of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, and unused to such blasphemy).  “Do I understand you to say, you consider pounds, shillings, and pence unreasonable?”

He put an emphasis on the last word that might fairly have struck terror to the stranger’s breast; but somehow it did not.  “Why, yes,” the Alien went on with imperturbable gentleness:  “no order or principle, you know.  No rational connection.  A mere survival from barbaric use.  A score, and a dozen.  The score is one man, ten fingers and ten toes; the dozen is one man with shoes on—­fingers and feet together.  Twelve pence make one shilling; twenty shillings one pound.  How very confusing!  And then, the nomenclature’s so absurdly difficult!  Which of these is half-a-crown, if you please, and which is a florin? and what are their respective values in pence and shillings?”

Philip picked out the coins and explained them to him separately.  The Alien meanwhile received the information with evident interest, as a traveller in that vast tract that is called Abroad might note the habits and manners of some savage tribe that dwells within its confines, and solemnly wrapped each coin up in paper, as his instructor named it for him, writing the designation and value outside in a peculiarly beautiful and legible hand.  “It’s so puzzling, you see,” he said in explanation, as Philip smiled another superior and condescending British smile at this infantile proceeding; “the currency itself has no congruity or order:  and then, even these queer unrelated coins haven’t for the most part their values marked in words or figures upon them.”

“Everybody knows what they are,” Philip answered lightly.  Though for a moment, taken aback by the novelty of the idea, he almost admitted in his own mind that to people who had the misfortune to be born foreigners, there was perhaps a slight initial difficulty in this unlettered system.  But then, you cannot expect England to be regulated throughout for the benefit of foreigners!  Though, to be sure, on the one occasion when Philip had visited the Rhine and Switzerland, he had grumbled most consumedly from Ostend to Grindelwald, at those very decimal coins which the stranger seemed to admire so much, and had wondered why the deuce Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland could not agree among themselves upon a uniform coinage; it would be so much more convenient to the British tourist.  For the British tourist, of course, is not a foreigner.

On the door-step of Miss Blake’s Furnished Apartments for Families and Gentlemen, the stranger stopped again.  “One more question,” he interposed in that same suave voice, “if I’m not trespassing too much on your time and patience.  For what sort of term—­by the day, month, year—­does one usually take lodgings?”