第13章

"Yes, I'll take her with pleasure," I responded thankfully. "Of course I don't know why she flung the stool,--it may have been very reprehensible; but there is always good stuff in stool-flingers; it's the sort of spirit one likes to inherit in diluted form. Now, whom will you take?"

"I haven't even a peg on which to hang a Scottish ancestor," said Salemina disconsolately.

"Oh, nonsense! think harder. Anybody will do as a starting-point; only you must be honourable and really show relationship, as I did with Jenny and Tam."

"My aunt Mary-Emma married a Lindsay," ventured Salemina hesitatingly.

"That will do," I answered delightedly.

"'The Gordons gay in English blude They wat their hose and shoon;

The Lindsays flew like fire aboot Till a' the fray was dune.'

You can play that you are one of the famous `licht Lindsays,' and you can look up the particular ancestor in your big book. Now, Francesca, it's your turn!"

"I am American to the backbone," she declared, with insufferable dignity. "I do not desire any foreign ancestors."

"Francesca!" I expostulated. "Do you mean to tell me that you can dine with a lineal descendant of Sir Fitzroy Donald Maclean, Baronet, of Duart and Morven, and not make any effort to trace your genealogy back further than your parents?"

"If you goad me to desperation," she answered, "I will wear an American flag in my hair, declare that my father is a Red Indian, or a pork-packer, and talk about the superiority of our checking system and hotels all the evening. I don't want to go, any way. It is sure to be stiff and ceremonious, and the man who takes me in will ask me the population of Chicago and the amount of wheat we exported last year,--he always does."

"I can't see why he should," said I. "I am sure you don't look as if you knew."

"My looks have thus far proved no protection," she replied sadly.

"Salemina is so flexible, and you are so dramatic, that you enter into all these experiences with zest. You already more than half believe in that Tam o' the Cowgate story. But there'll be nothing for me in Edinburgh society; it will be all clergymen--"

"Ministers" interjected Salemina.

--"all ministers and professors. My Redfern gowns will be unappreciated, and my Worth evening frocks worse than wasted!"

"There are a few thousand medical students," I said encouragingly, "and all the young advocates, and a sprinkling of military men--they know Worth frocks."

"And," continued Salemina bitingly, "there will always be, even in an intellectual city like Edinburgh, a few men who continue to escape all the developing influences about them, and remain commonplace, conventional manikins, devoted to dancing and flirting.

Never fear, they will find you!"

This sounds harsh, but nobody minds Salemina, least of all Francesca, who well knows that she is the apple of that spinster's eye. But at this moment Susanna opens the door (timorously, as if there might be a panther behind it) and announces the cab (in the same tone in which she would announce the beast); we pick up our draperies, and are whirled off by the lamiter to dine with the Scottish nobility.