Arrived at the hotel like drowned rats, Madame was all anxiety and motherly solicitude, begged us to get between blankets and have tisane administered or some eau sucree with a spoonful of rum in it.  She bemoaned the uncertainty of the climate, and hoped we were not going to have bad weather for our visit.  And when we declined all her polite attentions, assuring her that a change of clothing was all we needed, and all we should do, she declared that she was amazed at our temerity, but that she had the greatest admiration for the constitution and courage of the people of Greater Britain.

AFTER TWENTY YEARS

BY ADA M. TROTTER.

“May you come in and rest, you ask?  Why of course you may.  Take this rocking-chair—­but there, some men don’t like rockers.  Well, if so be you prefer it, stay as you be, right in the shadder of the vines.  It’s a pretty look-out from there, I know, all down the valley over them meadow lands—­and that rushing bit of river.

“You ask me if I know’d one Kitty Larkins, the prettiest gal in the county, the prettiest gal anywheres, you say.  Yes, sir!  I know’d her well.  Dead?  Yes, sir, Kitty—­the bright, gay creature folks knew as Kitty Larkins died this day twenty years ago.

“Do I know how she died and the story of her life?  I do well; I do; p’raps better nor most.  You want to hear about her; maybe you would find it kind of prosing; but there, the afternoon sun is pretty hot, and the haymakers out there in the meadows have got a hard time of it.

“What’s that!  Don’t I go and lend a hand in the press of the season?  Well, I don’t.  Not for twenty year.  There’s them as calls it folly, but the smell of the hay brings it all back and turns me sick.  You say you can’t believe such a fine woman as me would be subject to fancies; you think I look too young, do you, to be talkin’ this way of twenty years ago.  Wall, there’s more than one way of counting age.  Some goes by grey hairs, some by happenings.  But this that came so long ago is all as clear—­clear as God’s light upon the meadows there.

“But if you will have the whole story, let’s begin at the beginnin’, and that brings you to the old school-house where them three, neighbours’ children they was, went to school together.  There was Kitty of course, and Elihu Grant and Joel Barton, them was the three that my story’s about.

“’Lihu was always a big, over-grown lad, with a steadfast, kind heart, not what folks called brilliant; he warn’t going to be extraordinary when he grow’d up, didn’t want to be, so fur as I know; he aimed to be as good a man’s his father, nothing more, nothing less.  Good and true was ’Lihu; all knew that, yet his name was never mentioned without a ‘but,’ not even by the school marm, though she said he was the best boy in her school.

“Kitty looked down some on ’Lihu, made him fetch and carry, and always accustomed herself to the ‘but,’ as if the good qualities wasn’t of much account since they could not command general admiration.  Yes, this had something to do with what follered; I can see that plain enough.  Still, I know she loved ’Lihu from babyhood deep down in her heart of hearts—­