nce,
a deeper divergence between himself and Peter than between Peter and
these Britishers. The earmark of your coast-born South Carolinian is
the selfsame, absolute sureness of himself, his place, his people,
in the essential scheme of things. Wasn't he born in South Carolina?
Hasn't he relatives in Charleston? Very well, then!

In Peter's case this essential sureness had developed into a
courtesy so instinctive, a democracy so unaffectedly sincere, that
it flavored his whole personality with a pleasing distinctiveness.
The British do not expect their very young men to be too knowing
or too fatally bright; they mark the promise rather than the
performance of youth, and spaciously allow time for the process of
development. And so Peter Champneys found himself curiously at home
in democratically oligarchic England.

"I feel as if I were visiting my grandmother's house," he confided
to a certain lady next whom he was seated at one of Mrs. Hemingway's
small dinners.

"And where is your mother's house?" wondered the lady, who found
herself attracted to him.

"Over home in Riverton," said Peter Champneys. And his face went
wistful, remembering the little town with the tide-water gurgling in
its coves, and its great oaks hung with long gray swaying moss, and
the sinuous lines of the marshes against sky and water, and the
smell of the sea--all the mellow magic of the coast that was Home.
It didn't occur to him that an English lady mightn't know just where
"over home in Riverton" might be. She was so great a lady that she
didn't ask. She looked at him and said thoughtfully:

"I wonder if you wouldn't like to see an old place of ours. I'm
having the Hemingways down for a week, and I should like you to come
with them." And she added, with a charming smile: "As you are an
artist, you'll like our gallery. There's a Rembrandt you should
see."

Peter's eyes of a sudden went deep and golden, and their dazzling
depths had so instant and so sweet a recognition that her heart
leaped in answer. It was as if a young archangel had secretly
signaled her in passing.

When the formal invitation arrived, Mrs. Hemingway was delighted
with what she termed Peter's good fortune. The invitations to that
house were coveted and prized she explained. Really, Peter Champneys
was unusually lucky! She felt deeply gratified.

Peter hadn't known that there existed anywhere on earth anything
quite so perfect as the life in a great English country