egards details, but their main direction I know well enough. I'm
going to be an English country gentleman."

Lord Plowden visibly winced a little at this announcement. He seemed
annoyed at the consciousness that he had done so, turning abruptly first
to stare out of the window, then shifting his position on the seat, and
at last stealing an uneasy glance toward his companion. Apparently his
tongue was at a loss for an appropriate comment.

Thorpe had lost none of these unwilling tokens of embarrassment. Plowden
saw that at once, but it relieved even more than it surprised him to see
also that Thorpe appeared not to mind. The older man, indeed, smiled in
good-natured if somewhat ironical comprehension of the dumb-show.

"Oh, that'll be all right, too," he said, with the evident intention
of reassurance. "I can do it right enough, so far as the big things are
concerned. It'll be in the little things that I'll want some steering."

"I've already told you--you may command me to the utmost of my power,"
the other declared. Upon reflection, he was disposed to be ashamed
of himself. His nerves and facial muscles had been guilty of an
unpardonable lapse into snobbishness--and toward a man, too, who
had been capable of behaviour more distinguished in its courtesy and
generosity than any he had encountered in all the "upper circles" put
together. He recalled all at once, moreover, that Thorpe's "h's" were
perfect--aud, for some occult reason, this completed his confusion.

"My dear fellow"--he began again, confronting with verbal awkwardness
the other's quizzical smile--"don't think I doubt anything about you. I
know well enough that you can do anything--be anything--you like."

Thorpe laughed softly.

"I don't think you know, though, that I'm a public-school man," he said.

Plowden lifted his brows in unfeigned surprise. "No--I didn't know
that," he admitted, frankly.

"Yes, I'm a Paul's Pigeon," Thorpe went on, "as they called them in
my day. That's gone out now, I'm told, since they've moved to the big
buildings in Hammersmith. I did very well at school, too; came out in
the first fourteen. But my father wouldn't carry the thing any further.
He insisted on my going into the shop when I left St. Paul's and
learning the book-business. He had precisely the same kind of dynastic
idea, you know, that you fellows have. His father and his grand-father
had been booksellers, and he was going to hand on the tradition to me,
and