"But—Great Scott, aunt!" exclaimed poppa, recklessly, "think what this place was like—all marsh, with the sea right alongside; not four miles off as it is now. Why, you couldn't base so much as a calculation on it!"
"I must say," said Mrs. Portheris in severe surprise, "I knew that America had made great advances in the world of invention, but I did not expect to find what looks much like jealousy of the achievements of an older civilisation."
The Senator looked at his aunt, then he put his hat further back on his head and cleared his throat. I prepared for the worst, and the worst would undoubtedly have come if Dicky Dod had not suddenly remembered having seen a man with a foreign telegram looking for somebody in the Cathedral.
"It's a feat!" reiterated Mrs. Portheris as the Senator left us in pursuit of the man with the telegram.
"It's fourteen feet," cried the Senator from a safe distance, "out of the perpendicular!" and left us to take the consequences.
CHAPTER X.
When momma reported to me Mrs. Portheris's proposition that we should make the rest of our Continental trip as one undivided party, I found it difficult to understand.
"These sudden changes of temperature," I remarked, "are trying to the constitution. Why this desire for the society of three unabashed Americanisms like ourselves?"
"That's just what I wondered," said momma. "For you can see that she is full of insular prejudice against our great country. She makes no attempt to disguise it."