"I have read in the journal, Madame Roscoe, of a gerate fire in your countree--a town entire! I hope you lose not by it?" This inquirer was a grave little woman from Lausanne, the widow of a Swiss pastor. Mrs. Roscoe gave a shrug. "My interests are not of that kind. Where was the fire, may I ask?" "But in your countree, Amereekar. Voyons: the citee of Tam-Tampico." Mrs. Roscoe laughed as she helped herself to fish--a fish tied with yellow ribbons, and carrying a yellow lily in his mouth. "When we were at Mentone an old lady informed me one day of the arrival of some of my 'countrypeople.' 'Now,' she said, 'you will not be the only Americans in the house.' At dinner they appeared. They were Chilians. I said to my friend, 'They are not my countrypeople; they are South Americans.' She answered, severely: 'I suppose you say that because they are Southerners! But now that so many years have passed since that dreadful war of yours was brought to a close, I should think it would be far wiser to drop such animosities.'" No one laughed over this story save an American who was within hearing. This American, a Vermont man, had arrived at the _pension_ several days before, and already he had formed a close and even desperate friendship with Mrs. Roscoe, pursuing her, accompanied by his depressed wife, to her bedroom (she had no sitting-room), where, while trying to find a level place on her slippery yellow sofa, he had delivered himself as follows: "Wife--she kept saying, 'You ought to go abroad; you aren't well, and it'll do you good; they say it's very sociable over there if you stay at the _pensions_.'" (He gave this word a political pronunciation.) "All I can say is--if _this_ is their _pension_!" And he slapped his thigh with a resounding whack, and laughed sarcastically. The beef now came round, a long slab of mahogany color, invisibly divided into thin slices, the whole decked with a thick dark sauce which contained currants, citron, and raisins. "We miss Mr. Willoughby sadly," observed Mrs. Goldsworthy, with a sigh, as she detached a slice. "Only last night he was here." "I cannot say _I_ miss him," remarked Mrs. Roscoe. "You do not? Pray tell us why?" suggested the curate, eagerly. "Well, he's so black-letter; so early-English; so 'Merrily sungen the monks of Ely.' In Baedeker, you know." "He is very deep, if you mean that," said Mrs. Goldsworthy, reprovingly. "Deep? I should call him wide; he is all over the place. If you speak of a cat, he replies with a cataract; of a plate, with Plato; of the cream, with cremation. I don't see how he manages to live in England at all; there isn't standing-room there for his feet. But perhaps he soars; he is a sort of a Cupid, you know. What will become of him if they make him a bishop? For how can a bishop flirt? The utmost he can do is to say, 'I will see you after service in the vestry.'"