be of course, and as, if Utica—he had her sharp little sister’s word for it—was worse than what was about him there, he’d be hanged if he’d go to Utica. He overtook Pandora quickly; she was in the act of introducing the representative of order to her parents, quite in the same manner in which she had introduced the Captain of the ship. Mr. and Mrs. Day got up and shook hands with him and they evidently all prepared to have a little talk. “I should like to introduce you to my brother and sister,” he heard the girl say, and he saw her look about for these appendages. He caught her eye as she did so, and advanced with his hand outstretched, reflecting the while that evidently the Americans, whom he had always heard described as silent and practical, rejoiced to extravagance in the social graces. They dawdled and chattered like so many Neapolitans. “Good-bye, Count Vogelstein,” said Pandora, who was a little flushed with her various exertions but didn’t look the worse for it. “I hope you’ll have a splendid time and appreciate our country.” “I hope you’ll get through all right,” Vogelstein answered, smiling and feeling himself already more idiomatic. “That gentleman’s sick that I wrote to,” she rejoined; “isn’t it too bad? But he sent me down a letter to a friend of his—one of the examiners—and I guess we won’t have any trouble. Mr. Lansing, let me make you acquainted with Count Vogelstein,” she went on, presenting to her fellow-passenger the wearer of the straw hat and the breastpin, who shook hands with the young German as if he had never seen him before. Vogelstein’s heart rose for an instant to his throat; he thanked his stars he hadn’t offered a tip to the friend of a gentleman who had often been mentioned to him and who had also been described by a member of Pandora’s family as Pandora’s lover. “It’s a case of ladies this time,” Mr. Lansing remarked to him with a smile which seemed to confess surreptitiously, and as if neither party could be eager, to recognition. “Well, Mr. Bellamy says you’ll do anything for _him_,” Pandora said, smiling very sweetly at Mr. Lansing. “We haven’t got much; we’ve been gone only two years.” Mr. Lansing scratched his head a little behind, with a movement that sent his straw hat forward in the direction of his nose. “I don’t know as I’d do anything for him that I wouldn’t do for you,” he responded with an equal geniality. “I guess you’d better open that one”—and he gave a little affectionate kick to one of the trunks. “Oh mother, isn’t he lovely? It’s only your sea-things,” Pandora cried, stooping over the coffer with the key in her hand. “I don’t know as I like showing them,” Mrs. Day modestly murmured. Vogelstein made his German salutation to the company in general, and to Pandora he offered an audible good-bye, which she returned in a bright friendly voice, but without looking round as she fumbled at the lock of her trunk. “We’ll try another, if you like,” said Mr. Lansing good-humouredly.