Part 4 (1/2)

”And you like Toronto also, Mr. Dale,” continued his hostess.

”Yes, better than any other Canadian town I have visited; it is very simply laid out, one couldn't lose oneself if one tried.”

”It is laid out like a what do you call it, like a chess-board,” said Captain Tremaine, an Irishman.

”Yes, not unlike,” continued Dale, ”and as to quiet, one would think the curfew rang; I noticed it particularly coming from the Reform Club the other night.”

”We all notice how quiet our streets are at night, and after your London and New York City, we must seem to you as if we had taken a sedative,”

said Mrs. Gower, taking his arm to the dining-room; ”but where is Miss Crew, Mr. Dale?”

”She was too fatigued to come, she foolishly overtaxed her strength, taking my boy to the Industrial Home, at Mimico, I think she said.”

”That's correct, it's a pet scheme of Mayor Howland's, and a worthy one too.”

”Yes, so she said; they also visited your Normal School, and talked of the Cyclorama of Sedan.”

”Indeed! they have overtaxed the brain and memory, I fear; what does Garfield say to it all?”

”Chatters like a magpie over the superior glories of New York, but is honestly pleased after all.”

”I expect your little son is English only in name.”

”Yes, and in his love for a good dinner,” he said, laughingly.

”Well, from all we Canadians hear, there is every reason he should, an English dinner is enough 'to tempt even ghosts to pa.s.s the Styx for more substantial feasts,'” she said, gaily.

”Mrs. Gower is always up to the latest in remembering the tastes of her guests,” said Mrs. Dale to her left-hand neighbor, Mr. Buckingham, as tiny crescents of melon preceded the soup.

”That she is,” he said, complacently; ”no man would sigh for his club dinner, did our hostess cater for him.”

”Goodness knows what Henry would do if our bank stopped payment, or our Pittsburg foundries shut down; for I know no more about cooking than Jay Gould's baby,” she said, discussing a plate of delicious oyster soup.

”He, I expect, makes himself heard on the feeding bottle,” said lively Mrs. Smyth.

”But you are unusually candid as to your short-comings, Mrs. Dale,”

continued Buckingham, amusedly.

”Because I can afford to be; were I poor, I reckon I should p.a.w.n off my mamma's tea-cakes on my young man as my own, as men in love believe anything--they are as dull as Broadway without millinery.”

”By the way, Mrs. Dale, talking of millinery, where are your bonnets going to, they are three stories and a mansard at present?”

”Oh, only a cupola, Mr. Buckingham, on which birds will perch.”

”How so; I was under the impression the bird hunt is a thing of the past?”

”No, indeed! not while there are men in the field.”

”How so; I do not follow you?”