be like having purple hot-house grapes handed out to one
impaled on the prongs of a plated silver fork. I should have wanted to
slap her, if _she_ had told me I was looking at Arundel Castle, but I
was grateful to her brother for the information. This was a wickedness
in me; but if you knew how I felt, having started out from the Ritz
expecting a quiet day's run through one or two of the garden counties of
England, to come like this, bang into the midst of Roman villas, and
under the shadow of a tenth-century castle-keep, maybe you'd excuse my
morals for being upset.

You can't have centuries roll away, like a mere cloud of dust raised by
your motor, and be perfectly normal, can you? I tried to seem calm,
because I hate to be gushing and school-girlish (for Ellaline's sake, I
_suppose_, as it can't make any difference what her Dragon thinks of
me), but I'm pretty sure he saw that I was rather "out of myself" over
all his surprises.

He stopped the motor, and we sat for a long time gazing up at the towers
beyond the green and silver beeches--a pile of battlemented stone,
looking like the Middle Ages carved in granite, yet more habitable
to-day than ever before.

We had lunched early, and had plenty of time, so we walked through the
park, which made me feel that England must be rather big, after all, to
have room for thousands of such parks--even much larger ones--and all
its great cities--and miles and miles of farms and common land, and mere
"country."

When we lived in New York, you and Dad and I, we used to joke about the
way we should feel in England if we should ever go to visit Dad's
ancestral Devonshire. We used to pretend that, after being accustomed to
the vast distances of America, we should be afraid of tumbling off the
edge of England; but so far I find that I don't dread that imminent
peril. Just now England seems so vast that my only fear is I mayn't have
time to reach the Roman Wall.

The Duke's midges bit us a good deal, in the park, so we didn't linger,
but went back to Apollo, where Young Nick's remarkable appearance had
attracted a crowd of boys and girls from Arundel town. They stood in the
road gaping at him, with that steady, unblinking stare English children
and French grown-ups have, while the brown image sat motionless in the
car, as scornfully oblivious of his critics as if he'd been the idol he
looked.

Poor Sir Lionel hates the attention his extraordinary little chauffeur
excites, for