The American variety, she said, were immersed in mere domesticity or social schemes and squabbles.

'Oh, they talked.

I never heard so much talk in all my life as when I was over there,' said Miss Buckston; 'but I couldn't see that they got anything done with it.

They had debates about health, and yet one could hardly for love or money get a window open in a train; and they had debates on the ethics of citizenship, and yet you are governed by bosses.

Voluble and inefficient creatures, I call them.' Aunt Julia, conscious of her own honourable career, with its achievements in enlightened philanthropy and its background of careful study, heard this with inexpressible ire; but when she was dragged to the execrable taste of a retaliation, and pointed to the British countryside matron, as they saw her at Merriston--a creature, said Aunt Julia, hardly credible in her complacency and narrowness, Miss Buckston rejoined with an unruffled smile: 'Ah, we'll wake them up.