an and
Mr. Penzance listened entranced, examined cuts in the catalogue, asked
questions, and in fact ended by finding that they must repress an actual
desire to possess the luxury. The joy their attitude bestowed upon
Selden was the thing he would feel gave the finishing touch to the hours
which he would recall to the end of his days as the "time of his life."
Yes, by gee! he was having "the time of his life."

Later he found himself feeling--as Miss Vanderpoel had felt--rather
as if the whole thing was a dream. This came upon him when, with Mount
Dunstan and Penzance, he walked through the park and the curiously
beautiful old gardens. The lovely, soundless quiet, broken into only by
bird notes, or his companions' voices, had an extraordinary effect on
him.

"It's so still you can hear it," he said once, stopping in a velvet,
moss-covered path. "Seems like you've got quiet shut up here, and you've
turned it on till the air's thick with it. Good Lord, think of little
old Broadway keeping it up, and the L whizzing and thundering along
every three minutes, just the same, while we're standing here! You can't
believe it."

It would have gone hard with him to describe to them the value of his
enjoyment. Again and again there came back to him the memory of the
grandmother who wore the black net cap trimmed with purple ribbons.
Apparently she had remained to the last almost contumaciously British.
She had kept photographs of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort on her
bedroom mantelpiece, and had made caustic, international comparisons.
But she had seen places like this, and her stories became realities to
him now. But she had never thought of the possibility of any chance of
his being shown about by the lord of the manor himself--lunching, by
gee! and talking to them about typewriters. He vaguely knew that if the
grandmother had not emigrated, and he had been born in Dunstan village,
he would naturally have touched his forehead to Mount Dunstan and the
vicar when they passed him in the road, and conversation between them
would have been an unlikely thing. Somehow things had been changed by
Destiny--perhaps for the whole of them, as years had passed.

What he felt when he stood in the picture gallery neither of his
companions could at first guess. He ceased to talk, and wandered
silently about. Secretly he found himself a trifle awed by being looked
down upon by the unchanging eyes of men in strange, rich garments--in
cor