One of our fair Britons had the darker malady. She fasted regularly on Fridays and Tuesdays. We always recognized her jours maigres by the quantity of cakes and pastry we saw carried to her room just before dinner, to which dinner she came in nun-like gray silk, saintly coiffure, with ascetic pallor on cheeks wont to bloom with roses de Ninon, to dine, à la Sainte Catherine or Sainte Something else, on a few lentils or a lettuce-leaf.
One Sunday somebody asked this fair devotee to give us a certain popular but profane piano-arrangement. She was shocked beyond measure. A few moments' temptation, however, brought her to a compromise.
"I think there will be no harm if I play it slowly and make it as solemn as possible."
We smiled at the æsthetic piety of our Saint Catherine. But she did more than smile at our national practicality when, one evening, from the gay drawing-room we heard the clamor of a feminine arrival below:
"I won't see any rooms till I know your price. I won't stir a peg till I know what's to pay. I've come from Chicago, where folks know what's what, and I'm going to do Yoorup on the cheap!"
Saint Catherine worshipped her country's aristocracy. One day Jonathan happened to be putting on his coat in the hall, when somebody knocked at the front door. Forgetting that the act, so natural to an American, is ungentlemanly and menial in England, he opened the door himself. A couple of young swells inquired for Saint Catherine.
"I just saw her go out," answered Jonathan.
"Tell her that the brothers of Lord Verisopht called," said the spokesman.
"I'll tell her," spoke Jonathan; "but, good heavens, young man, don't lords' brothers have any names of their own in this country?"
Another day came a gorgeous individual with a bouquet to the door.