Later on we gathered round a fire, with the cats, under the quaint old portraits of very straight-backed dead-and-gone ladies Stacy in the drawing-room, and I told all I knew about the Apache Indians and Niagara Falls. I think I also set the minds of the Stacy family at rest about the curious idea that we want to annex Canada--they had some distant relations there, I believe, whom they did not want to see annexed--although it appeared that the relations had been heterodox on the subject, and had said they wouldn't particularly mind! I suggested that they were probably stock-raising in the Northwest out there, and found our tariff inconvenient; and the Stacys said Yes, they were. I continued that the union they would like to see was doubtless commercial, and not political; and the Stacys, when they thought of this, became more cheerful. Further on, the Squire handed me a silver candlestick at the foot of the stairs with the courtliness of three generations past; and as I went to bed by candle-light for the first time in my life, I wondered whether I would not suddenly arrive, like this, at the end of a chapter, and find that I had just been reading one of Rhoda Broughton's novels. But in the morning it came in at the window with the scent of the lilacs, and I undoubtedly heard it again--'Cuckoo!'...'Cuckoo!' XXVII HAVEN'T you some letters, child, to your Ambassador, or whatever he is, here in London?' asked Lady Torquilin one morning. 'Why, yes,' I said, 'I have. I'd forgotten about them. He is quite an old friend of poppa's--in a political way; but poppa advised me not to bother him so long as I wasn't in any difficulty--he must have such lots of Americans coming over here for the summer and fussing round every year, you know. And I haven't been.' 'Well, you must now,' declared Lady Torquilin, 'for I want you to go to Court with me a fortnight from to-day. It's five years since I've gone, and quite time I should put in an appearance again. Besides, the Maffertons wish it.' 'The Maffertons wish it?' I said. 'Dear me! I consider that extremely kind. I suppose they think I would enjoy it very much. And I dare say I should.' 'Lady Mafferton and I talked it over yesterday,' Lady Torquilin continued, 'and we agreed that although either she or I might present you, it would be more properly done, on account of your being an American, by your American man's wife. Indeed, I dare say it's obligatory. So we must see about it.' And Lady Torquilin and Lady Mafferton, with very little assistance from me, saw about it.