t me have a look at yours--just a bike around the park, if you don't
object--or I'll leave the bike outside, if you'd rather."

"I don't object at all," said Mount Dunstan. "The fact is, I happened to
be on the point of asking you to come and have some lunch--when you got
on your bicycle."

Selden pushed his cap and cleared his throat.

"I wasn't expecting that," he said. "I'm pretty dusty," with a glance
at his clothes. "I need a wash and brush up--particularly if there are
ladies."

There were no ladies, and he could be made comfortable. This being
explained to him, he was obviously rejoiced. With unembarrassed
frankness, he expressed exultation. Such luck had not, at any time,
presented itself to him as a possibility in his holiday scheme.

"By gee," he ejaculated, as they walked under the broad oaks of the
avenue leading to the house. "Speaking of luck, this is the limit! I
can't help thinking of what my grandmother would say if she saw me."

He was a new order of companion, but before they had reached the house,
Mount Dunstan had begun to find him inspiring to the spirits.
His jovial, if crude youth, his unaffected acknowledgment of
unaccustomedness to grandeur, even when in dilapidation, his delight in
the novelty of the particular forms of everything about him--trees and
sward, ferns and moss, his open self-congratulation, were without doubt
cheerful things.

His exclamation, when they came within sight of the house itself, was
for a moment disturbing to Mount Dunstan's composure.

"Hully gee!" he said. "The old lady was right. All I've thought about
'em was 'way off. It's bigger than a museum." His approval was immense.

During the absence in which he was supplied with the "wash and brush
up," Mount Dunstan found Mr. Penzance in the library. He explained to
him what he had encountered, and how it had attracted him.

"You have liked to hear me describe my Western neighbours," he said.
"This youngster is a New York development, and of a different type.
But there is a likeness. I have invited to lunch with us, a young man
whom--Tenham, for instance, if he were here--would call 'a bounder.'
He is nothing of the sort. In his junior-assistant-salesman way, he is
rather a fine thing. I never saw anything more decently human than his
way of asking me--man to man, making friends by the roadside if I was
'up against it.' No other fellow I have known has ever exhibited the
same healthy sympathy."

The Reverend