had written a good book was one of a noble company, and a lot
more of it. It depends on the point of view."

"Of course it does, _ma mie_. In this case, the honest point of view is
the one we must take. We must forget for a moment that we are English
lady and gentlemen----"

"Never!" said Bill, firmly, lighting a cigarette.

"----and remember that we are students of life. What would Balzac or
Flaubert have known of life if they had been merely gentlemen? Nothing!
What does a gentleman know? Nothing. What does he do in the world?
Nothing. Of what use is he beyond his interest as a vestige of a defunct
feudalism? This is the Twentieth Century, in the United States of
America, not the----"

"Oh stop, stop!" she said, laughing. "Go down and get that thousand
words finished."

I went.

CHAPTER II

HIS CHILDREN

It was a week later, and we were sitting on the verandah looking out
across Essex County towards Manhattan. To us, who some five years before
had been shaken from our homestead in San Francisco and hurried
penniless and almost naked across the continent, our location here in
the Garden State, looking eastward towards the Western Ocean and our
native isle, had always appeared as "almost home." We endeavoured to
impress this upon our friends in England, explaining that "we could be
home in four or five days easily"; and what were four or five days?
True, we have never gone so far as to book our passage; but there is
undoubted comfort in the fact that in a week at the outside, we could
walk down Piccadilly. Out on the Pacific Slope we were, both physically
and spiritually, a world away.

It pleased us, too, to detect in the configuration of the district a
certain identity with our own county of Essex, in England, where a
cousin of Bill's had a cottage, and where, some day, we were to have a
cottage too. Our home is called _Wigboro' House_, after the cousin's,
and we have settled it that, just as you catch a glimpse of grey sea
across Mersea Island from Wigborough, so we may catch the glint and
glare of the lights of Manhattan, and, on stormy nights, feel on our
lips the sharpness of the salt wind that blows across Staten Island
from the Atlantic. It is an innocent conceit, and our only critic so far
had been Miss Fraenkel, who had objected to the name, and advocated with
American succinctness the advantage of a number. As Bill had remarked
mournfully, "It wouldn't be so bad if it was number three or f