"I am glad you did restrain yourself--once," exclaimed Salemina.
"What a tactful person the Reverend Ronald must be, if you have
reported him faithfully! Why didn't you give him up, and turn to
your other neighbour?"

"I did, as soon as I could with courtesy; but the man on my left was
the type that always haunts me at dinners; if the hostess hasn't one
on her visiting-list she imports one for the occasion. He asked me
at once of what material the Brooklyn Bridge is made. I told him I
really didn't know. Why should I? I seldom go over it. Then he
asked me whether it was a suspension bridge or a cantilever. Of
course I didn't know; I am not an engineer."

"You are so tactlessly, needlessly candid," I expostulated. "Why
didn't you say boldly that the Brooklyn Bridge is a wooden
cantilever, with gutta-percha braces? He didn't know, or he
wouldn't have asked you. He couldn't find out until he reached
home, and you would never have seen him again; and if you had, and
he had taunted you, you could have laughed vivaciously and said you
were chaffing. That is my method, and it is the only way to
preserve life in a foreign country. Even my earl, who did not
thirst for information (fortunately), asked me the population of the
Yellowstone Park, and I simply told him three hundred thousand, at a
venture."

"That would never have satisfied my neighbour," said Francesca.
"Finding me in such a lamentable state of ignorance, he explained
the principle of his own stupid Forth Bridge to me. When I said I
understood perfectly, just to get into shallower water, where we