Lippincotts Magazine, August, 1885 | Page 6

any way; but things are
very much changed, as you say. And I agree with you in your estimate
of the Ketchums. She is a sweet young thing, and I heartily like him.
Only think! his last act was to send a great basket of fine fruits up to
my room, and quite an armful of railway-novels for the journey. Such
beautiful thought for our comfort as they have shown!"
"He is rather a good sort in some ways, but a very ignorant man. I
showed him some of my specimens the other day, and he thought them
granitic, when they were really Silurian mica schist of some kind," put
in Mrs. Sykes, who never could bear unqualified praise. "Still, on the
whole, the Americans are less ignorant than might have been
expected."
"I consider Mr. Ketchum a most kind, gentlemanly, sociable, clever
man," said Miss Noel, with an emphatic nod of her head to each
adjective, "geology or no geology. And I must say that it is very
ungrateful of you to speak of him so sneeringly always."
Sir Robert only waited to write the usual batch of letters, including a
last appeal to the editor of the "Columbia Eagle" to know whether he
intended to apologize for and publicly retract a certain article, and
asking "whether it was possible that any considerable or respectable
portion of the Americans could be so arbitrary, illiberal, and exclusive
as to wish to exclude the English from America." This done, he left for

Canada with his relatives. With his stay there we have nothing to do. It
consumed six weeks of exhaustive travel and study of Canadian
conditions and resources, resulting ultimately in the conclusion that
Manitoba was not the place he was looking for. The ladies, who had
been left in Montreal, were then taken for a short tour through the
country, which they all enjoyed, after which Sir Robert asked Miss
Noel whether she would be willing to take Ethel back to Niagara and
wait there a fortnight, or perhaps a little longer, while he and Mr.
Heathcote came back by way of New England and from there went
down into Maryland and Virginia, where, according to "a member of
the Canadian Parliament," lands were to be had for a song.
"A fortnight? I could spend a twelve-month there," exclaimed she.
"Had it not been that I was ashamed to insist upon being let off this
journey, I should have stopped there as it was."
To Niagara the aunt and niece and Parsons went, as agreed, and there
they found Mr. Bates wandering languidly about the place in chronic
discontent with everything for not being something else. He had burned
a good deal of incense on Ethel's shrine when she was at Kalsing, and
now hailed their advent with some approach to enthusiasm, and
attached himself to their suite, vice Captain Kendall, retired. He liked to
be seen with them, thought the views from the Canadian side were
"deucedly fine," was cruelly affected by the advertisements in the
neighborhood, which he denounced as "dreadfully American," trickled
out much feeble criticism of and acid comment on his surroundings,
gave utterance to fervent wishes that he was "abrard," and in his own
unpleasant way gave Ethel to understand that she might make a
fellow-countryman happy by becoming Mrs. Samuel Bates if she liked
to avail herself of a golden opportunity. "I would live in England, you
know. I am really far more at home there than here," said the
expatriated suitor. "I have been taken for an Englishman as often as
three times in one week, do you know. Curious, isn't it? I ought to be
down in Kent now, visiting Lady Simpson, a great friend of mine, who
has asked me there again and again. You would like her if you knew
her. She is quite the great lady down there."
"A foolish little man, and evidently a great snob, or else rather daft
upon some points," Ethel reported to her aunt. "And such a dull,
discontented creature, with all his money!" Ethel had some trials of her

own just then, and it was no great felicity to listen to Mr. Bates's
endless complaints, nor could she spare much sympathy for the
sufferings of the exile of Tecumseh, with his rose-leaf sensibilities,
inanities, absurdities.
Meanwhile, the young gentleman who was indirectly responsible for
many a sad thought of two charming girls that we know of--and who
shall say how many more?--was enjoying as much happiness as ever
fell to any man in the capacity of ardent sportsman. He had joined the
duke and his party at St. Louis, and from there they had gone "well
away from anywhere," as he said in describing his adventures to Mr.
Heathcote. He had at last reached