We glanced along the table to note the new-comers. They were there, neatly and stylishly dressed in walking-costumes. They were three quiet gentlemanly and lady-like persons, but their faces were Medusa-like to almost every American who gazed upon them. The foreigners looked intensely amused at this collapse of the American contingent,--all save our Danish landlord, who stared with amazement. Next day our new-comers disappeared. "How in the world did you _congedier_ them?" somebody asked. "I told them my Americans admire enough coppery Turks, South Americans, Japanese, and East Indians, but they turn to stone at sight of niggers," answered Mr. Nodskou. The line was certainly not drawn at color, for our Parsees were dusky enough, goodness knows, and them our maidens found very captivating. Several of them spoke no English, and it was the fascinating pastime of our English, Australian, and American girls to teach them our common language. But the result was, alas, not a little confusing to our Parsees. "Don't fancy you are learning English from those Americans," warned Britannia. "Their accent is horrible: they say the weather is 'fair' when they mean 'fine,' they call their luggage 'baggage,' and when they speak of their travelling-boxes talk of their 'trunks,' like elephants!" "Don't be fooled by English English," advised Columbia: "the accent is like a mouthful of pudding, and when they mean to say the weather is bad they say it is 'nawsty;' they call their rubbers 'galoshes,' their depots 'stations,' and when they start on a journey they get their 'boxes' together, like sweet-biscuit-peddlers." "Don't mind what either of them say," quoth Miss Melbourne. "Both are wrong. It is only we Australians, living between the two branches of the language, as it were, who select the best and gobble it." "What must it to say when I have such a fear, _such_ a fear, that I speak not?" asked one of the Parsees. "Say you're dickey on your pins," laughed Australia. "Say you feel all of a goneness," spoke up Columbia. "No; that is Americanese," flouted Britannia: "say you're in a beastly funk!" That our Parsees improved under such tuition was somewhat remarkable. The lingual advance of one of them was quite startling. Our young ladies had striven to teach him "good-by." One day, therefore, as the ladies were departing from the dining-room, leaving the gentlemen to their wine, our Parsee opened the door with grave, Oriental courtesy, and, bowing to the rustling covey, said solemnly, "By god, ladies, by god!" During a political discussion in which English and Australians took chief parts, a Melbourne girl exclaimed excitedly, "Thank goodness, _I'm_ not English!" "Not Engleesh!" exclaimed her neighboring Parsee. "What are you but the small little brat of the mother-country?" Not until we laughed did our grave Oriental remember that "brat" and "child" are not strictly synonymous.