The Cardinal's Snuff Box

"Softly, softly," put in Mrs. O'Donovan Florence. "Not a drop

of coffee for me. An orange-sherbet, if you please. Coffee

was a figure of speech--a generic term for light refreshments."

Peter laughed, and amended his order.

"Do you see those three innocent darlings playing together,

under the eye of their governess, by the Wellingtonia yonder?"

enquired the lady.

"The little girl in white and the two boys?" asked Peter.

"Precisely," said she. "Such as they are, they're me own."

"Really?" he responded, in the tone of profound and sympathetic

interest we are apt to affect when parents begin about their

children.

"I give you my word for it," she assured him. "But I mention

the fact, not in a spirit of boastfulness, but merely to show

you that I 'm not entirely alone and unprotected. There's an

American at our hotel, by the bye, who goes up and down telling

every one who'll listen that it ought to be Washingtonia, and

declaiming with tears in his eyes against the arrogance of the

English in changing Washington to Wellington. As he's a

respectable-looking man with grown-up daughters, I should think

very likely he's right."

"Very likely," said Peter. "It's an American tree, is n't it?"

"Whether it is n't or whether it is," said she, "one thing is

undeniable: you English are the coldest-blooded animals south

of the Arctic Circle."

"Oh--? Are we?" he doubted.

"You are that," she affirmed, with sorrowing emphasis.

"Ah, well," he reflected, "the temperature of our blood does

n't matter. We're, at any rate, notoriously warm-hearted."

"Are you indeed?" she exclaimed. "If you are, it's a mighty

quiet kind of notoriety, let me tell you, and a mighty cold

kind of warmth."

Peter laughed.

"You're all for prudence and expediency. You're the slaves of

your reason. You're dominated by the head, not by the heart.

You're little better than calculating-machines. Are you ever

known, now, for instance, to risk earth and heaven, and all

things between them, on a sudden unthinking impulse?"

"Not often, I daresay," he admitted.

"And you sit there as serene as a brazen statue, and own it

without a quaver," she reproached him.

"Surely," he urged, "in my character of Englishman, it behooves

me to appear smug and self-satisfied?"

"You're right," she agreed. "I wonder," she continued, after a

moment's pause, during which her eyes looked thoughtful, "I

wonder whether you would fall upon and annihilate a person who

should venture to offer you a word of well-meant advice."