"That is American, too." "It is a quality Americans inherited from England," lightly; "one of the results of it is that England covers a rather large share of the map of the world.

It is a practical quality.

You and I might spend hours in talking to each other of what Nigel has done and what you have done, of what he has said, and of what you have said.

We might give some hours, I daresay, to what the Dowager did and said.

But wiser people than we are have found out that thinking of black things past is living them again, and it is like poisoning one's blood.