The following day, on returning from a small errand in the neighbourhood, as I entered the _rue_ or street on which our hostel fronted I was startled out of all composure to behold Miss Flora Canbee, of Louisville, Kentucky, and Miss Hilda Slicker, of Seattle, Washington, in animated conversation with two young men, one of whom was tall and dark and the other slight and fair, but both apparelled in the habiliments peculiar to officers in the French Army. For a moment I could scarcely believe my eyes. I think I paused to readjust the glasses I wear, fearing my trusty lenses might have played me false; but it was true. As I hurriedly advanced, with amazement and displeasure writ large on my countenance, Miss Canbee proceeded to disarm my mounting suspicions by informing me that the two officers were her first cousins, and then introduced them to me. They responded to my cordial salutation in excellent English, Miss Canbee casually adding, as though to make conversation: "Of course you remember, Doctor Fibble, my having told you several times that my mother was French?" To this I could only reply in all sincerity that the fact of her having told me so had entirely escaped my mind, which was quite true. Yet ordinarily my memory for trifles is excellent, and I can only attribute to press of other cares my failure now to recall the circumstance. I could well understand why Miss Canbee felt constrained to obtain permission to spend the afternoon in converse with her cousins in preference to joining the rest of us in a long walk in the warm, bright sunshine along the quays of the River Seine, this being an excursion I had planned at luncheon; but why--as I repeatedly asked myself--why should Miss Hilda Slicker manifest pique to a marked degree when I insisted on her accompanying us? She, surely, could feel no personal interest in two young French officers whose acquaintance she had just formed and who were in no degree related to her by ties of blood-kinship. Such happenings as the two I have just narrated went far to convince me that even the refining and elevating influences of foreign travel, when prosecuted under the most agreeable and congenial of auspices, might not suffice in all instances to curb the naturally frivolous and unheeding tendencies of growing young persons of the opposite sex, between the given ages of seventeen and twenty.