"I wish I might have seen her. We must get to know your family, Finch."
"Y-yes. Thanks. I'm sure they'd like it."
"Do you really? Then I shall motor out to Jalna one day and call on your aunt, Lady Buckley!"
Finch hastened to say: "She's going home to England. She is just here on a visit."
"Does she like England better?"
"Oh yes, she hates the Colonies."
Leigh exclaimed: "Colony! I like that! We're an independent part of the Empire."
"Of course. But I'm used to hearing us called a colony at home."
"I should think you younger ones would object," demurred Leigh.
"I don't see why. If you're a part of anything, how can it matter what you're called?"
Mrs. Leigh said: "It doesn't matter. We all love England; that is what matters."
"I don't," said Ada. "I love Russia. I have a Russian soul."
"But how can you tell?" asked Finch, wondering if possibly he had one.
"Because it's never satisfied."
He sighed. "In that case, I'm afraid it's my stomach that's Russian!"
Mrs. Leigh noticed that he looked as though he had been ill and asked him about his health.
"I'm awfully fit," he insisted. "I've never been better. I'm just naturally cadaverous."
"Perhaps. But more probably you have been growing very fast." Her mind flew back to his family. "You have sisters-in-law at home, haven't you? And one of them—the wife of a poet brother—is an American?"
"Yes . . . that is—they live in another house—just a little place. He's been ill."
"We were so intrigued when we were crossing! A young man from Philadelphia was enthusiastic over both books of your brother's poems. The lyrics, and" She could not recall the other.
