"I don't think that ignominious," said the Chaperon. "I suppose it doesn't choose to go into the sea. It would rather rest after its labors and lie down in a pleasant pool, to dream about where it rose on the Splugen, or about the way it poured out of Lake Constance, and went roaring over the rocks at Schaffhausen to wind on among hilly vineyards and ruined castles, past the Drachenfels and Cologne. If they choose to pump it against its will, that's their affair; at least that's how I should feel if I were the Rhine."
"How Scotch of you, Aunt Fay!" exclaimed Starr, fervently; but he looked worried; and I wondered if he had told the girls that Lady MacNairne had never been much abroad. Evidently her double has traveled, and remembered what she saw. I am not curious concerning other people's affairs, but I confess I should like to know something of Aunt Fay's past, for she seems so ignorant of some things, so well-informed upon others.
Suddenly Miss Van Buren looked up from a red book which had engaged her attention ever since, at Alphen, we turned out of the narrow water-street of the canal into the broader thoroughfare of the river.
"This book explains everything except what you want to know!" she complained. "Why can't it tell what Saint Joris is in England? He must be some saint there, and I saw his name over that nice little inn with the garden at Alphen."
"St. George," I said; though she had not asked me.
"I might have known," she sighed, "and no doubt the Dutch have put the dragon into their language too, stuck full of those "i's" and "j's", that make me feel whenever I see them in print as if my hair were done up too tight, or my teeth were sizes too large for my mouth. 'Rijn wijn,' for instance. Who would think that meant something sleek and pleasant, like Rhine wine?"
"Why not?" I asked. "We pronounce it almost the same."
"That's because you haven't got the courage of your convictions. You fling the 'i's' and 'j's' about, and then pretend they're not there."
"Why, don't you see that they're only 'y's'?" I protested, and really it does appear strange that to foreign eyes they can look, when side by side, like separate letters.
But the Chaperon stopped us. She said that we could find enough to do minding our p's and q's in life, without quarreling over "i's" and "j's"; so the argument ended, and the girls turned their attention to making tea.