Lewis was entranced. Already he was really quite flushed
with interest. As Assyrian character, engraved upon sarcophogi, would
have allured and thrilled him, so was he allured by the cryptic nature
of the two or three American slang phrases Mount Dunstan had repeated to
him. His was the student's simple ardour.

"Up against it," he echoed. "Really! Dear! Dear! And that signifies, you
say----"

"Apparently it means that a man has come face to face with an obstacle
difficult or impossible to overcome."

"But, upon my word, that is not bad. It is strong figure of speech.
It brings up a picture. A man hurrying to an end--much desired--comes
unexpectedly upon a stone wall. One can almost hear the impact. He is up
against it. Most vivid. Excellent! Excellent!"

The nature of Selden's calling was such that he was not accustomed to
being received with a hint of enthusiastic welcome. There was something
almost akin to this in the vicar's courteously amiable, aquiline
countenance when he rose to shake hands with the young man on his
entrance. Mr. Penzance was indeed slightly disappointed that his
greeting was not responded to by some characteristic phrasing. His
American was that of Sam Slick and Artemus Ward, Punch and various
English witticisms in anecdote. Life at the vicarage of Dunstan had not
revealed to him that the model had become archaic.

The revelation dawned upon him during his intercourse with G. Selden.
The young man in his cheap bicycling suit was a new development. He was
markedly unlike an English youth of his class, as he was neither shy,
nor laboriously at his ease. That he was at his ease to quite an amazing
degree might perhaps have been remotely resented by the insular mind,
accustomed to another order of bearing in its social inferiors, had it
not been so obviously founded on entire unconsciousness of self, and
so mingled with open appreciation of the unanticipated pleasures of the
occasion. Nothing could have been farther from G. Selden than any desire
to attempt to convey the impression that he had enjoyed the hospitality
of persons of rank on previous occasions. He found indeed a gleeful
point in the joke of the incongruousness of his own presence amid such
surroundings.

"What Little Willie was expecting," he remarked once, to the keen joy
of Mr. Penzance, "was a hunk of bread and cheese at a village saloon
somewhere. I ought to have said 'pub,' oughtn't I? You don't call them
saloons here."