"I beg your pardon, madam," I stammered, respectfully. "I didn't know there was anybody here." I was about to withdraw when she said, commandingly: "Wait." I waited, while she went on: "You're a little spitfire. Did you know it?" The voice was harsh, with the Quaker drawl I have noticed in the older generation of Philadelphians; but the tone wasn't hostile. On the contrary, there was something in it that invited me to play up. I played up, demurely, however, saying, with a more emphatic respectfulness: "No, madam; I didn't." "Well, you can know it now. Who are you?" She made the quaint little gesture with which I have seen English princesses summon those they wished to talk to. "Come over here where I can get a look at you." I moved nearer, but she didn't ask me to sit down. In answer to her question I said, simply, "I'm a Canadian." "Oh, a Canadian! That's neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. It's nothing." "No, madam, nothing but a point of view." "What do you mean by that?" I repeated something of my father's: "The point of view of the Englishman who understands America or of the American who understands England, as one chooses to put it. The Canadian is the only person who does both." "Oh, indeed? I'm not a Canadian--and yet I flatter myself I know my England pretty well." I made so bold as to smile dimly. "Knowing and understanding are different things, madam, aren't they? The Canadian understands America because he is an American; he understands England because he is an Englishman. It's only of him that that can be said. You're quite right when you label him a point of view rather than a citizen or a subject." "I didn't label him anything of the kind. I don't know anything about him, and I don't care. What are you besides being a Canadian?" "Nothing, madam," I said, humbly. "Nothing? What do you mean?" "I mean that there's nothing about me, that I have or am, that I don't owe to my country." "Oh, stuff! That's the way we used to talk in the United States forty years ago." "That's the way we talk in Canada still, madam--and feel." "Oh, well, you'll get over it as we did--when you're more of a people." "Most of us would prefer to be less of a people, and not get over it." She put up her lorgnette. "Who was your father? What sort of people do you come from?" I tried to bring out my small store of personal facts, but she paid them no attention. When I said that my father had been a judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia I might have been calling him a voivode of Montenegro or the president of a zemstvo. It was too remote from herself for her mind to take in. I could see her, however, examining my features, my hands, my dress, with the shrewd, sharp eyes of a connoisseur in feminine appearance. She broke into the midst of my recital with the words: "You can't be in love with Hugh Brokenshire." Fearing attack from an unexpected quarter, I clasped my hands with some emotion. "Oh, but, madam, why not?"