every one who'll listen that it ought to be Washingtonia, and
declaiming with tears in his eyes against the arrogance of the
English in changing Washington to Wellington. As he's a
respectable-looking man with grown-up daughters, I should think
very likely he's right."

"Very likely," said Peter. "It's an American tree, is n't it?"

"Whether it is n't or whether it is," said she, "one thing is
undeniable: you English are the coldest-blooded animals south
of the Arctic Circle."

"Oh--? Are we?" he doubted.

"You are that," she affirmed, with sorrowing emphasis.

"Ah, well," he reflected, "the temperature of our blood does
n't matter. We're, at any rate, notoriously warm-hearted."

"Are you indeed?" she exclaimed. "If you are, it's a mighty
quiet kind of notoriety, let me tell you, and a mighty cold
kind of warmth."

Peter laughed.

"You're all for prudence and expediency. You're the slaves of
your reason. You're dominated by the head, not by the heart.
You're little better than calculating-machines. Are you ever
known, now, for instance, to risk earth and heaven, and all
things between them, on a sudden unthinking impulse?"