Mr. Townshend replied very suitably that water was a great treat to one who had been for so long a dweller in the East. Elizabeth found that with this guest there was going to be no need of small talk--no aimless, irrelevant remarks uttered at random to fill up awkward silences. He was a good talker and a good listener. Mr. Seton was greatly interested in his travellers' tales, and as Elizabeth watched them honesty compelled her to confess to herself that this was not the guest she had pictured. She liked his manner to her father, and she liked his frank laugh. After all, it would not be difficult to amuse him when he was so willing to laugh. "I wonder," said Mr. Seton, as he pared an apple, "if you have ever visited my dream-place?" He gave his shy boy's smile. "I don't know why, but the very name spells romance to me--Bokhara." "Yes--'that outpost of the infinitive.' I know it well; or rather I don't, of course, for no stray Englishman can know a place like that well, but I have been there several times.... I'm just wondering if it would disappoint you." "I dare say it might," said Mr. Seton. "But I'm afraid there is no likelihood of my ever journeying across the desert to find my 'dream-moon-city' either a delight or a disappointment. But I keep my vision--and I have a Bokhara rug that is a great comfort to me." "When you retire, Father," broke in Elizabeth, "when we're done with kirks and deacons'-courts for ever and a day, we shall go to Bokhara, you and I. It will be such a nice change." "Well, well," said her father, "perhaps we shall; but in the meantime I must go to my sermon." In the drawing-room Elizabeth settled herself in an arm-chair with some needlework, and pointed out the cigarettes and matches to her guest. "Don't you smoke?" he asked. "No. Father would hate it: he doesn't ever smoke himself." "I see. I say, you have got a lot of jolly prints. May I look at them?" He proved very knowledgeable about the prints, and from prints they passed to books, and Elizabeth found him so full of honest enthusiasm, and with so nice a taste in book-people, that the last shreds of distrust and reserve vanished, and she cried in her Elizabethan way: "And actually I wondered what in the world I would talk to you about!" Arthur Townshend laughed. "Tell me," he said, "what subjects you had thought of?" "Well," said she, sitting up very straight and counting on her fingers, "first I thought I would start you on Persia and keep you there as long as possible; then intelligent questions about politics, something really long-drawn-out, like Home Rule or Women's Suffrage; then--then--I _had_ thought of Ellen Wheeler Wilcox!" Arthur Townshend groaned. "_What_ sort of an idea had Aunt Alice given you of me?" "Quite unintentionally," Elizabeth said, "she made you sound rather a worm. Not a crawling worm, you understand, but a worm that reared an insolent head, that would think it a horrid bore to visit a manse in Glasgow--a side-y worm."