"One of the things I'm biking over the country for, is to get a look at just such a place as this.We haven't got 'em in America.My old grandmother was always talking about them.Before her mother brought her to New York she'd lived in a village near some park gates, and she chinned about it till she died.When I was a little chap I liked to hear her.She wasn't much of an American.Wore a black net cap with purple ribbons in it, and hadn't outlived her respect for aristocracy.Gee!" chuckling, "if she'd heard what Isaid to you just now, I reckon she'd have thrown a fit.Anyhow she made me feel I'd like to see the kind of places she talked about.And I shall think myself in luck if you'll let me have a look at yours--just a bike around the park, if you don't object--or I'll leave the bike outside, if you'd rather.""I don't object at all," said Mount Dunstan."The fact is, I happened to be on the point of asking you to come and have some lunch--when you got on your bicycle."Selden pushed his cap and cleared his throat.
"I wasn't expecting that," he said."I'm pretty dusty,"with a glance at his clothes."I need a wash and brush up--particularly if there are ladies."
There were no ladies, and he could be made comfortable.
This being explained to him, he was obviously rejoiced.With unembarrassed frankness, he expressed exultation.Such luck had not, at any time, presented itself to him as a possibility in his holiday scheme.
"By gee," he ejaculated, as they walked under the broad oaks of the avenue leading to the house."Speaking of luck, this is the limit! I can't help thinking of what my grandmother would say if she saw me."He was a new order of companion, but before they had reached the house, Mount Dunstan had begun to find him inspiring to the spirits.His jovial, if crude youth, his unaffected acknowledgment of unaccustomedness to grandeur, even when in dilapidation, his delight in the novelty of the particular forms of everything about him--trees and sward, ferns and moss, his open self-congratulation, were without doubt cheerful things.
His exclamation, when they came within sight of the house itself, was for a moment disturbing to Mount Dunstan's composure.
"Hully gee!" he said."The old lady was right.All I've thought about 'em was 'way off.It's bigger than a museum." His approval was immense.
During the absence in which he was supplied with the "wash and brush up," Mount Dunstan found Mr.Penzance in the library.He explained to him what he had encountered, and how it had attracted him.
"You have liked to hear me describe my Western neighbours,"he said."This youngster is a New York development, and of a different type.But there is a likeness.I have invited to lunch with us, a young man whom--Tenham, for instance, if he were here--would call `a bounder.' He is nothing of the sort.In his junior-assistant-salesman way, he is rather a fine thing.I never saw anything more decently human than his way of asking me--man to man, making friends by the roadside if I was `up against it.' No other fellow I have known has ever exhibited the same healthy sympathy."The Reverend Lewis was entranced.Already he was really quite flushed with interest.As Assyrian character, engraved upon sarcophogi, would have allured and thrilled him, so was he allured by the cryptic nature of the two or three American slang phrases Mount Dunstan had repeated to him.His was the student's simple ardour.
"Up against it," he echoed."Really! Dear! Dear! And that signifies, you say----""Apparently it means that a man has come face to face with an obstacle difficult or impossible to overcome.""But, upon my word, that is not bad.It is strong figure of speech.It brings up a picture.A man hurrying to an end--much desired--comes unexpectedly upon a stone wall.
One can almost hear the impact.He is up against it.Most vivid.Excellent! Excellent!"The nature of Selden's calling was such that he was not accustomed to being received with a hint of enthusiastic welcome.
There was something almost akin to this in the vicar's courteously amiable, aquiline countenance when he rose to shake hands with the young man on his entrance.Mr.Penzance was indeed slightly disappointed that his greeting was not responded to by some characteristic phrasing.His American was that of Sam Slick and Artemus Ward, Punch and various English witticisms in anecdote.Life at the vicarage of Dunstan had not revealed to him that the model had become archaic.
The revelation dawned upon him during his intercourse with G.Selden.The young man in his cheap bicycling suit was a new development.He was markedly unlike an English youth of his class, as he was neither shy, nor laboriously at his ease.That he was at his ease to quite an amazing degree might perhaps have been remotely resented by the insular mind, accustomed to another order of bearing in its social inferiors, had it not been so obviously founded on entire unconsciousness of self, and so mingled with open appreciation of the unanticipated pleasures of the occasion.Nothing could have been farther from G.Selden than any desire to attempt to convey the impression that he had enjoyed the hospitality of persons of rank on previous occasions.He found indeed a gleeful point in the joke of the incongruousness of his own presence amid such surroundings.
"What Little Willie was expecting," he remarked once, to the keen joy of Mr.Penzance, "was a hunk of bread and cheese at a village saloon somewhere.I ought to have said `pub,' oughtn't I? You don't call them saloons here."He was encouraged to talk, and in his care-free fluency he opened up many vistas to the interested Mr.Penzance, who found himself, so to speak, whirled along Broadway, rushed up the steps of the elevated railroad and struggling to obtain a seat, or a strap to hang to on a Sixth Avenue train.
