“I never was much addicted to singing songs, for my part. He must have been a feckless kind of creature to let her get between him and the man that wanted his blood. But he was very natural after that I will say. ‘I hackit him in pieces sma’.’” said Miss Dempster; “that is the real Border spirit: and I make little doubt he was English--the man with the gun.” The pretty young ladies in their pretty toilettes gathered about the old lady. “It is most interesting,” they said; “just what one wished to find in the old country--the real accent--the true hereditary feeling.” “You are just behaving like an old haverel,” said Miss Beenie to her sister in an undertone. It seldom occurred to her to take the command of affairs, but she saw her opportunity and seized it. “For our part,” she said, “it is just as interesting to us to see real people from America. I have heard a great deal about them, but I never saw them before. It will be a great change to find yourselves in the midst of ceevilization? And what was that about mosses growing on your poor bit little hands? Bless me! I have heard of hair and fur, but never of green growth. Will that be common on your side of the water?” She spoke with the air of one who was seeking information. Mr. John Burroughs himself, that charming naturalist, might have been disconcerted by so serious a question. And the two old ladies remained in possession of the field. “I just answered a fool according to his folly,” Miss Beenie remarked, with modest enjoyment of a triumph that seldom fell to her share, “for you were carried away, Sarah, and let them go on with their impidence. A set of young idiots out of a sauvage country that were too grand for Walter Scott!” It was on the whole a great day for the Miss Dempsters. They saw everybody, they explored the whole house, and identified every piece of furniture that was not Lady Allonby’s. They made a private inspection of the dining-room, where there was a buffet--erected not only for light refreshments, but covered with luxuries and delicacies of a more serious description. “Bless me, I knew there was tea and ices,” they said; “it’s like a ball supper, and a grand one. Oh, those millionaires! they just cannot spend money enough. But I like our own candlesticks,” said Miss Dempster, “far better than these branchy things, like the dulse on the shore, the candelawbra, or whatever they call it, on yon table.” “They’re bigger,” said Miss Beenie; “but my opinion is that the branches are all hollow, not solid like ours.” “There’s not many like ours,” said Miss Dempster; “indeed I am disposed to think they are just unique. Lord bless us, is that the doctor at the side-table? He is eating up everything. The capacity that man has is just extraordinary--both for dribblets of drink and for solid food.”