my son after me. That was his idea. And he thought that Paul's would
help this--but that Oxford would kill it.

"Of course, he was right there--but he was wrong in supposing there was
a bookseller in me. I liked the books well enough, mind you--but damn
the people that came to buy them, I couldn't stand it. You stood two
hours watching to see that men didn't put volumes in their pockets, and
at the end of that time you'd made a profit of ninepence. While you
were doing up the parcel, some fellow walked off with a book worth
eighteen-pence. It was too slow for me. I didn't hit it off with the old
man, either. We didn't precisely quarrel, but I went off on my own hook.
I hung about London for some years, trying this thing and that. Once I
started a book-shop of my own--but I did no good here. Finally I turned
it up altogether, and went to Australia. That was in 1882. I've been in
almost every quarter of the globe since; I've known what it was to be
shipwrecked in a monsoon, and I've lain down in a desert not expecting
to get up again, with my belt tightened to its last hole for hunger--but
I can't remember that I ever wished myself back in my father's
book-shop."

Plowden's fine eyes sparkled his appreciation of the other's mood.
He was silent for a moment, then lifted his head as if something had
occurred to him. "You were speaking of the plan that you should succeed
to your father's business--and your son after you--you're not married,
are you?"

Thorpe slowly shook his head.

"Our station is the next," said the younger man. "It's a drive of
something under two miles. You'd better light another cigar." He added,
as if upon a casual afterthought: "We can both of us think of marrying
now."

CHAPTER V

FOR the next two hours, Thorpe's thoughts were almost wholly occupied
with various phases of the large subject of domestic service. He seemed
suddenly to have been transported to some region populated exclusively
by clean-shaven men in brown livery. One of these was holding a spirited
horse outside the station, and when Lord Plowden had taken the reins,
and Thorpe had gathered the rugs about his knees and feet, this menial
silently associated himself with the young man who had accompanied them
from town, on the back seat of the trap. With these people so close
behind him, Thorpe felt that any intimate conversation was out of the
question. Indeed, talk of any sort was not invited; the big horse burst
forth wi