The sun sparkled on the moving duckweed of the canal. The sky was blue overhead. Here and there a red-roofed farm showed among the green pastures. Ahead the avenues tapered away into distance, and met at the vanishing point. Elizabeth smiled for sheer pleasure at the sight of two little blue-smocked children solemnly staring at the boat as it passed. Then she glanced at him with an irritated frown. It was his turn to smile. "You called the tune, my lady," he said to himself, "and it is you shall change it, not I." "Foreign countries are very like England, are they not?" he said. "The same kind of trees, you know, and the same kind of cows, and--and everything. Even the canals are very like ours." "The canal system," said Elizabeth instructively, "is the finest in the world." "_Adieu, Canal, canard, canaille_," he quoted. They had always barred quotations in the old days. "I don't understand Latin," said she. Then their eyes met, and he got up abruptly and walked to the end of the boat and back. When he sat down again, he sat beside her. "Shall we go on?" he said quietly. "I think it is your turn to choose a subject--" "Oh! have you read _Alice in Wonderland_?" she said, with simple eagerness. "Such a pretty book, isn't it?" He shrugged his shoulders. She was obstinate; all women were. Men were not. He would be magnanimous. He would not compel her to change the tune. He had given her one chance; and if she wouldn't--well, it was not possible to keep up this sort of conversation till they got to Sluys. He would-- But again she saved him. "I won't play any more," she said. "It's not fair. Because you may think me a fool. But I happen to know that you are Mr. Brown, who writes the clever novels. You were pointed out to me at the hotel; and--oh! do tell me if you always talk like this to strangers?" "Only to English ladies on canal boats," said he, smiling. "You see, one never knows. They might wish one to talk like that. We both did it very prettily. Of course, more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows, but I think I may congratulate you on your first attempt at the English-abroad conversation." "Do you know, really," she said, "you did it so well that if I hadn't known who you were, I should have thought it was the real you. The felicitations are not all mine. But won't you tell me about Holland? That bit of yours about the hotel acquaintances was very brutal. I've heard heaps of people say that very thing. You just caught the tone. But Holland--" "Well, this is Holland," said he; "but I saw more of it than this, and I'll tell you anything you like if you won't expect me to talk clever, and turn the phrase. That's a lost art, and I won't humiliate myself in trying to recover it. To begin with, Holland is flat." "Don't be a geography book," Elizabeth laughed light-heartedly. "The coinage is--" "No, but seriously." "Well, then," said he, and the talk lasted till the little steamer bumped and grated against the quay-side at Sluys.