"Oh, woman, woman!" said the Doctor, laughing; "shopping is the characteristic symptom of the sex!"
"Talk about inspiration," said Jamie; "Marcia put mother and me through our best paces. I can tell you we conjugated: I must hustle, Thou must hustle, He must hustle, We must hustle, You must hustle, They must hustle, for three weeks," he said emphatically.
"You seem to have thriven on it," said the Doctor.
"Your work was in the New York Library, Miss Farrell?" It was Mr. Ewart who spoke.
"Yes, in a branch; I was there for five years."
"Who told you that, Gordon?" Jamie demanded.
"Who?—Who but Cale?"
Mrs. Macleod laughed outright at that, and Jamie and I joined her; we could not help it. The mere inflection of Mr. Ewart's voice, told us he had succumbed on the way over to our omniscient One. I saw that, quiet as he was, he had a keen sense of humor.
"Yes," he continued, "Cale made my acquaintance on the platform, and half way on the road he took occasion to give me some information concerning my household."
"Oh, I know that too," I said, "for Cale confided to me immediately on his arrival that, to use his own expression, he could n't get in a 'word edgewise', on account of the rapidity with which you and Peter were carrying on a conversation in French. I think he is jealous of every tongue but his own."