“Maybe my slang isn’t up to date. I’ll accept the Paris amendment. Was the young man handsome?”
“Not very. He was introducing threshing machines into France. Can you imagine Millet doing an American thresher with cowed peasants grouped about it? How perfectly impossible it would be, mon oncle!”
Teas in Mariona were essentially feminine, but a few young men had appeared, and one of them now came toward the trio.
“Here’s Morris Leighton; I want you to know him, Zee,” said Rodney Merriam.
Merriam greeted the young man cordially, and said as he introduced him:
“Mr. Leighton’s getting to be an old citizen, Julia. It isn’t his fault if you don’t know him.”
“I don’t know any one any more,” said Mrs. Forrest, plaintively. “I’ve been away so much. But I’m going to stay at home now. They say the malaria isn’t troublesome in Indiana any more.”
“Not half as bad as in your chosen Italy,” her brother answered.
“And it doesn’t seem new here at all,—the buildings down-town really look old,” said Zelda.
“The town’s old enough; it’s ancient; it’s older even than I am!”