“Do you really mean to say, Madame Casimir, that your brother cured this girl by electricity?”

“Purely so!” she answered earnestly.

“Then it’s the most wonderful recovery I ever saw.  Why, at Cannes, she was hollow-eyed, pale, and thin as a willow-wand; now she looks—­ well, she knows how she is herself—­but if she feels as spry as she looks, she’s in first-rate training!”

I laughed.

“I do feel spry, Colonel,” I said.  “Life seems to me like summer sunshine.”

“Brava!” exclaimed Mr. Challoner.  He was a staid, rather slow Kentuckian who seldom spoke; and when he did, seemed to find it rather an exertion.  “If there’s one class of folk I detest more than another, it is those all-possessed people who find life unsuited to their fancies.  Nobody asked them to come into it—­nobody would miss them if they went out of it.  Being in it, it’s barely civil to grumble at the Deity who sent them along here.  I never do it myself if I can help it.”

We laughed, and Mrs. Challoner’s eyes twinkled.

“In England, dear, for instance,” she said, with a mischievous glance at her spouse—­“in England you never grumbled, did you?”

Mr. Challoner looked volumes—­his visage reddened, and he clenched his broad fist with ominous vigour.

“Why, by the Lord!” he said, with even more than his usual deliberate utterance, “in England the liveliest flea that ever gave a triumphal jump in air would find his spirits inclined to droop!  I tell you, ma’am,” he continued, addressing himself to Zara, whose merry laugh rang out like a peal of little golden bells at this last remark—­“I tell you that when I walked in the streets of London I used to feel as if I were one of a band of criminals.  Every person I met looked at me as if the universe were about to be destroyed next minute, and they had to build another up right away without God to help ’em!”

“Well, I believe I agree with you,” said Colonel Everard.  “The English take life too seriously.  In their craze for business they manage to do away with pleasure altogether.  They seem afraid to laugh, and they even approach the semblance of a smile with due caution.”

“I’m free to confess,” added his wife, “that I’m not easily chilled through.  But an English ‘at home’ acts upon me like a patent refrigerator—­I get regularly frozen to the bone!”

“Dear me!” laughed Zara; “you give very bad accounts of Shakespeare’s land!  It must be very sad!”

“I believe it wasn’t always so,” pursued Colonel Everard; “there are legends which speak of it as Merrie England.  I dare say it might have been merry once, before it was governed by shopkeepers; but now, you must get away from it if you want to enjoy life.  At least such is my opinion.  But have you never been in England, Madame Casimir?  You speak English perfectly.”

“Oh, I am a fairly good linguist,” replied Zara, “thanks to my brother.  But I have never crossed the Channel.”