You are used to such things, Rose, no doubt--you do not
anticipate a luncheon-party with a mixture of curiosity and gloom. But it
is good for me to go to such affairs--it is like a waterbreak in a
stream--it aerates and agitates the mind. But _you_ don't realise the
amount of observation I bring to bear on such an event--the strange house,
the unfamiliar food, the new inscrutable people--everything has to be
observed, dealt with, if possible accounted for, and if unaccountable, then
inflexibly faced and recollected. A torrent of impressions has poured in
upon me--to say nothing of the anxious consideration beforehand of topics
of conversation, and modes of investigation! To stay in a new house crushes
me with fatigue--and even a little party like this, which seems, I daresay,
to some of you, a negligible, even a tedious thing, is to me rich in
far-flung experience."
"Mayn't we have the benefit of some of it?" said Rose.
"Yes," said Father Payne, "you may--you must, indeed! I am grateful to you
for introducing the subject--it is more graceful than if I had simply
divested myself of my impressions unsolicited."
"What was it all about?" said Rose.
"Why," said Father Payne, "the answer to that is simple enough--it was to
meet an American! I know that race! Who but an American would have heard of
our little experiment here, and not only wanted to know--they all do
that--but positively arranged to know? Yes, he was a hard-featured man--a
man of wealth, I imagine--from some place, the grotesque and extravagant
name of which I could not even accurately retain, in the State of
Minnesota.
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