‘Ah you don’t know her.  If you did you wouldn’t laugh at her.’

’Laugh at her!  Indeed I do not do that; but when I’m told that I’m to be thrown into the oven and burned because I’m such a worn-out old institution—­’

‘You don’t mean to say that you mind that!’

’Not much, when it comes up in the ordinary course of conversation; but it palls upon one when it is asserted for the fourth or fifth time in an evening.’

‘Alas, alas!’ exclaimed Miss.  Spalding, with mock energy.

‘And why, alas?’

’Because it is so impossible to make the oil and vinegar of the old world and of the new mix together and suit each other.’

‘You think it is impossible, Miss Spalding?’

’I fear so.  We are so terribly tender, and you are always pinching us on our most tender spot.  And we never meet you without treading on your gouty toes.’

‘I don’t think my toes are gouty,’ said he.

’I apologise to your own, individually, Mr Glascock; but I must assert that nationally you are subject to the gout.’

’That is, when I’m told over and over again that I’m to be cut down and thrown into the oven—­’

’Never mind the oven now, Mr Glascock.  If my friend has been over-zealous I will beg pardon for her.  But it does seem to me, indeed it does, with all the reverence and partiality I have for everything European,’ the word European was an offence to him, and he shewed that it was so by his countenance ’that the idiosyncrasies of you and of us are so radically different, that we cannot be made to amalgamate and sympathise with each other thoroughly.’

He paused for some seconds before he answered her, but it was so evident by his manner that he was going to speak, that she could neither leave him nor interrupt him.  ’I had thought that it might have been otherwise,’ he said at last, and the tone of his voice was so changed as to make her know that he was in earnest.

But she did not change her voice by a single note.  ’I’m afraid it cannot be so,’ she said, speaking after her old fashion half in earnest, half in banter.  ’We may make up our minds to be very civil to each other when we meet.  The threats of the oven may no doubt be dropped on our side, and you may abstain from expressing in words your sense of our inferiority.’

‘I never expressed anything of the kind,’ he said, quite in anger.

’I am taking you simply as the sample Englishman, not as Mr Glascock, who helped me and my sister over the mountains.  Such of us as have to meet in society may agree to be very courteous; but courtesy and cordiality are not only not the same, but they are incompatible.’

‘Why so?’

’Courtesy is an effort, and cordiality is free.  I must be allowed to contradict the friend that I love; but I assent too often falsely to what is said to me by a passing acquaintance.  In spite of what the Scripture says, I think it is one of the greatest privileges of a brother that he may call his brother a fool.’