A bird was perched upon a swaying branch of a slim young sapling near the fence-supported hedge which bounded the park, and Mount Dunstan had stopped to look at it and listen. A soft shower had fallen, and after its passing, the sun coming through the light clouds, there had broken forth³ again in the trees brief trills and calls and fluting⁴ of bird notes. The sward and ferns glittered fresh green under the raindrops; the young leaves on trees and hedge seemed visibly to uncurl, the uncovered earth looked richly dark and moist, and sent forth the fragrance⁶ from its deeps, which, rising to a man's nostrils⁷, stirs and thrills him because it is the scent⁸ of life's self. The bird upon the sapling was a robin⁹, the tiny round body perched upon his delicate legs, plump and bright plumaged for mating. He touched his warm red breast with his beak¹⁰, fluffed out and shook his feathers, and, swelling¹¹ his throat, poured forth his small, entranced song. It was a gay, brief, jaunty¹³ thing, but pure, joyous¹⁴, gallant¹⁵, liquid melody. There was dainty bravado¹⁶ in it, saucy¹⁷ demand and allurement¹⁸. It was addressed to some invisible hearer of the tender sex, and wheresoever she might be hidden—whether in great branch or low thicket¹⁹ or hedge—there was hinted no doubt in her small wooer's note that she would hear it and in due time respond. Mount Dunstan, listening, even laughed at its confident music. The tiny thing uttering its Call of the World—jubilant in the surety of answer!  
Having flung it forth, he paused a moment and waited, his small head turned sideways, his big, round, dew-bright black eye roguishly attentive²⁰. Then with more swelling of the throat he trilled and rippled²¹ gayly anew, undisturbed and undoubting, but with a trifle of insistence²². Then he listened, tried again two or three times, with brave chirps²³ and exultant²⁴ little roulades. “Here am I, the bright-breasted, the liquid-eyed, the slender-legged, the joyous and conquering! Listen to me—listen to me. Listen and answer in the call of God's world.” It was the joy and triumphant²⁵ faith in the tiny note of the tiny thing—Life as he himself was, though Life whose mystery his man's hand could have crushed—which, while he laughed, set Mount Dunstan thinking. Spring warmth and spring scents²⁶ and spring notes set a man's being in tune²⁷ with infinite things.
 
The bright roulade began again, prolonged itself with renewed effort, rose to its height, and ended. From a bush in the thicket farther up the road a liquid answer came. And Mount Dunstan's laugh at the sound of it was echoed by another which came apparently²⁸ from the bank rising from the road on the other side of the hedge, and accompanying the laugh was a good-natured nasal voice.
 
“She's caught on. There's no mistake about that. I guess it's time for you to hustle²⁹, Mr. Rob.”
 
Mount Dunstan laughed again. Jem Salter had heard voices like it, and cheerful slang phrases of the same order in his ranch¹ days. On the other side of his park fence there was evidently sitting, through some odd chance, an American of the cheery, casual order, not sufficiently³⁰ polished by travel to have lost his picturesque³¹ national characteristics.
 
Mount Dunstan put a hand on a broken panel of fence and leaped over into the road.
 
A bicycle was lying upon the roadside grass, and on the bank, looking as though he had been sheltering himself under the hedge from the rain, sat a young man in a cheap bicycling suit. His features were sharply cut and keen, his cap was pushed back from his forehead, and he had a pair of shrewdly careless boyish eyes.
 
Mount Dunstan liked the look of him, and seeing his natural start at the unheralded leap over the gap, which was quite close to him, he spoke³².
 
“Good-morning,” he said. “I am afraid I startled you.”
 
“Good-morning,” was the response. “It was a bit of a jolt³³ seeing you jump almost over my shoulder. Where did you come from? You must have been just behind me.”
 
“I was,” explained Mount Dunstan. “Standing³⁴ in the park listening to the robin.”
 
The young fellow laughed outright³⁵.
 
“Say,” he said, “that was pretty fine, wasn't it? Wasn't he getting it off his chest! He was an English robin, I guess. American robins³⁶ are three or four times as big. I liked that little chap. He was a winner.”
 
“You are an American?”
 
“Sure,” nodding. “Good old Stars and Stripes for mine. First time I've been here. Came part for business and part for pleasure. Having the time of my life.”
 
Mount Dunstan sat down beside him. He wanted to hear him talk. He had liked to hear the ranchmen talk. This one was of the city type, but his genial³⁷ conversational³⁸ wanderings would be full of quaint³⁹ slang and good spirits. He was quite ready to converse⁴⁰, as was made manifest by his next speech.
 
“I'm biking through the country because I once had an old grandmother that was English, and she was always talking about English country, and how green things was, and how there was hedges instead of rail fences. She thought there was nothing like little old England. Well, as far as roads and hedges go, I'm with her. They're all right. I wanted a fellow I met crossing, to come with me, but he took a Cook's trip to Paris. He's a gay sort of boy. Said he didn't want any green lanes in his. He wanted Boolyvard.” He laughed again and pushed his cap farther back on his forehead. “Said I wasn't much of a sport. I tell YOU, a chap that's got to earn his fifteen per, and live on it, can't be TOO much of a sport.”
 
“Fifteen per?” Mount Dunstan repeated doubtfully.
 
His companion chuckled⁴¹.
 
“I forgot I was talking to an Englishman. Fifteen dollars per week—that's what 'fifteen per' means. That's what he told me he gets at Lobenstien's brewery⁴² in New York. Fifteen per. Not much, is it?”
 
“How does he manage Continental⁴³ travel on fifteen per?” Mount Dunstan inquired.
 
“He's a typewriter and stenographer⁴⁴, and he dug up some extra jobs to do at night. He's been working and saving two years to do this. We didn't come over on one of the big liners with the Four Hundred, you can bet. Took a cheap one, inside cabin, second class.”
 
“By George!” said Mount Dunstan. “That was American.”
 
The American eagle slightly flapped his wings. The young man pushed his cap a trifle sideways this time, and flushed a little.
 
“Well, when an American wants anything he generally reaches out for it.”
 
“Wasn't it rather—rash, considering the fifteen per?” Mount Dunstan suggested. He was really beginning to enjoy himself.
 
“What's the use of making a dollar and sitting on it. I've not got fifteen per—steady—and here I am.”
 
Mount Dunstan knew his man, and looked at him with inquiring interest. He was quite sure he would go on. This was a thing he had seen before—an utter freedom from the insular⁴⁶ grudging⁴⁷ reserve, a sort of occult perception of the presence of friendly sympathy, and an ingenuous⁴⁸ readiness to meet it half way. The youngster, having missed his fellow-traveler, and probably feeling the lack of companionship in his country rides, was in the mood for self-revelation.
 
“I'm selling for a big concern,” he said, “and I've got a first-class article to carry. Up to date, you know, and all that. It's the top notch⁴⁹ of typewriting machines, the Delkoff. Ever seen it? Here's my card,” taking a card from an inside pocket and handing it to him. It was inscribed⁵⁰:
 
J. BURRIDGE & SON, DELKOFF TYPEWRITER CO. BROADWAY, NEW YORK. G. SELDEN.
 
“That's my name,” he said, pointing to the inscription⁵¹ in the corner. “I'm G. Selden, the junior assistant of Mr. Jones.”
 
At the sight of the insignia of his trade, his holiday air dropped from him, and he hastily drew from another pocket an illustrated⁵² catalogue.
 
“If you use a typewriter,” he broke forth, “I can assure you it would be to your interest to look at this.” And as Mount Dunstan took the proffered⁵³ pamphlet, and with amiable⁵⁴ gravity opened it, he rapidly poured forth his salesman's patter, scarcely pausing to take his breath: “It's the most up-to-date machine on the market. It has all the latest improved mechanical appliances. You will see from the cut in the catalogue that the platen roller is easily removed without a long mechanical operation. All you do is to slip two pins back and off comes the roller. There is also another point worth mentioning—the ribbon switch. By using this ribbon switch you can write in either red or blue ink while you are using only one ribbon. By throwing the switch on this side, you can use thirteen yards on the upper edge of the ribbon, by reversing it, you use thirteen yards on the lower edge—thus getting practically twenty-six yards of good, serviceable ribbon out of one that is only thirteen yards long—making a saving of fifty per cent. in your ribbon expenditure⁵⁵ alone, which you will see is quite an item to any enterprising firm.”
 
He was obliged to pause here for a second or so, but as Mount Dunstan exhibited no signs of intending to use violence, and, on the contrary, continued to inspect the catalogue, he broke forth with renewed cheery volubility:
 
“Another advantage is the new basket shift. Also, the carriage on this machine is perfectly⁵⁶ stationary⁵⁷ and rigid⁵⁸. On all other machines it is fastened by a series of connecting bolts and links, which you will readily understand makes perfect alignment⁵⁹ uncertain. Then our tabulator is a part and parcel of the instrument, costing you nothing more than the original price of the machine, which is one hundred dollars—without discount.”
 
“It seems a good thing,” said Mount Dunstan. “If I had much business to transact⁶⁰, I should buy one.”
 
“If you bought one you'd HAVE business,” responded Selden. “That's what's the matter. It's the up-to-date machines that set things humming. A slow, old-fashioned typewriter uses a firm's time, and time's money.”
 
“I don't find it so,” said Mount Dunstan. “I have more time than I can possibly use—and no money.”
 
G. Selden looked at him with friendly interest. His experience, which was varied⁶¹, had taught him to recognize symptoms. This nice, rough-looking chap, who, despite his rather shabby clothes, looked like a gentleman, wore an expression Jones's junior assistant had seen many a time before. He had seen it frequently on the countenances⁶³ of other junior assistants who had tramped the streets and met more or less savage⁶⁴ rebuffs through a day's length, without disposing of a single Delkoff, and thereby⁶⁵ adding five dollars to the ten per. It was the kind of thing which wiped the youth out of a man's face and gave him a hard, worn look about the eyes. He had looked like that himself many an unfeeling day before he had learned to “know the ropes and not mind a bit of hot air.” His buoyant, slangy soul was a friendly thing. He was a gregarious⁶⁶ creature, and liked his fellow man. He felt, indeed, more at ease with him when he needed “jollying along.” Reticence⁶⁷ was not even etiquette⁶⁸ in a case as usual as this.
 
“Say,” he broke out, “perhaps I oughtn't to have worried you. Are you up against it? Down on your luck, I mean,” in hasty translation.
 
Mount Dunstan grinned a little.
 
“That's a very good way of putting it,” he answered. “I never heard 'up against it' before. It's good. Yes, I'm up against it.
 
“Out of a job?” with genial sympathy.
 
“Well, the job I had was too big for me. It needed capital.” He grinned slightly again, recalling a phrase of his Western past. “I'm afraid I'm down and out.”
 
“No, you're not,” with cheerful scorn. “You're not dead, are you? S'long as a man's not been dead a month, there's always a chance that there's luck round the corner. How did you happen here? Are you piking it?”
 
Momentarily Mount Dunstan was baffled. G. Selden, recognising the fact, enlightened him. “That's New York again,” he said, with a boyish touch of apology. “It means on the tramp. Travelling along the turnpike. You don't look as if you had come to that—though it's queer the sort of fellows you do meet piking sometimes. Theatrical⁶⁹ companies that have gone to pieces on the road, you know. Perhaps—” with a sudden thought, “you're an actor. Are you?”
 
Mount Dunstan admitted to himself that he liked the junior assistant of Jones immensely. A more ingenuously⁷⁰ common young man, a more innocent outsider, it had never been his blessed privilege to enter into close converse with, but his very commonness was a healthy, normal thing. It made no effort to wreathe itself with chaplets of elegance⁷¹; it was beautifully unaware⁷² that such adornment⁷³ was necessary. It enjoyed itself, youthfully; attacked the earning of its bread with genial pluck, and its good-natured humanness had touched him. He had enjoyed his talk; he wanted to hear more of it. He was not in the mood to let him go his way. To Penzance, who was to lunch with him to-day, he would present a study of absorbing interest.
 
“No,” he answered. “I'm not an actor. My name is Mount Dunstan, and this place,” with a nod over his shoulder, “is mine—but I'm up against it, nevertheless.”
 
Selden looked a trifle disgusted. He began to pick up his bicycle. He had given a degree of natural sympathy, and this was an English chap's idea of a joke.
 
“I'm the Prince of Wales, myself,” he remarked, “and my mother's expecting me to lunch at Windsor. So long, me lord,” and he set his foot on the treadle.
 
Mount Dunstan rose, feeling rather awkward. The point seemed somewhat difficult to contend.
 
“It is not a joke,” he said, conscious that he spoke rather stiffly.
 
“Little Willie's not quite as easy as he looks,” was the cryptic⁷⁴ remark of Mr. Selden.
 
Mount Dunstan lost his rather easily lost temper, which happened to be the best thing he could have done under the circumstances.
 
“Damn it,” he burst out. “I'm not such a fool as I evidently look. A nice ass² I should be to play an idiot joke like that. I'm speaking the truth. Go if you like—and be hanged.”
 
Selden's attention was arrested. The fellow was in earnest. The place was his. He must be the earl chap he had heard spoken of at the wayside public house he had stopped at for a pot of beer. He dismounted from his bicycle, and came back, pushing it before him, good-natured relenting and awkwardness combining in his look.
 
“All right,” he said. “I apologise—if it's cold fact. I'm not calling you a liar⁷⁵.”
 
“Thank you,” still a little stiffly, from Mount Dunstan.
 
The unabashed good cheer of G. Selden carried him lightly over a slightly difficult moment. He laughed, pushing his cap back, of course, and looking over the hedge at the sweep of park, with a group of deer cropping softly in the foreground.
 
“I guess I should get a bit hot myself,” he volunteered handsomely, “if I was an earl, and owned a place like this, and a fool fellow came along and took me for a tramp. That was a pretty bad break, wasn't it? But I did say you didn't look like it. Anyway you needn't mind me. I shouldn't get onto Pierpont Morgan or W. K. Vanderbilt, if I met 'em in the street.”
 
He spoke the two names as an Englishman of his class would have spoken of the Dukes of Westminster or Marlborough. These were his nobles—the heads of the great American houses, and entirely⁷⁶ parallel, in his mind, with the heads of any great house in England. They wielded⁷⁸ the power of the world, and could wield⁷⁷ it for evil or good, as any prince or duke might. Mount Dunstan saw the parallel.
 
“I apologise, all right,” G. Selden ended genially⁷⁹.
 
“I am not offended,” Mount Dunstan answered. “There was no reason why you should know me from another man. I was taken for a gamekeeper a few weeks since. I was savage a moment, because you refused to believe me—and why should you believe me after all?”
 
G. Selden hesitated. He liked the fellow anyhow.
 
“You said you were up against it—that was it. And—and I've seen chaps down on their luck often enough. Good Lord, the hard-luck stories I hear every day of my life. And they get a sort of look about the eyes and mouth. I hate to see it on any fellow. It makes me sort of sick to come across it even in a chap that's only got his fool self to blame. I may be making another break, telling you—but you looked sort of that way.”
 
“Perhaps,” stolidly⁸⁰, “I did.” Then, his voice warming,
 
“It was jolly good-natured of you to think about it at all. Thank you.”
 
“That's all right,” in polite acknowledgment. Then with another look over the hedge, “Say—what ought I to call you? Earl, or my Lord?”
 
“It's not necessary for you to call me anything in particular—as a rule. If you were speaking of me, you might say Lord Mount Dunstan.”
 
G. Selden looked relieved.
 
“I don't want to be too much off,” he said. “And I'd like to ask you a favour. I've only three weeks here, and I don't want to miss any chances.”
 
“What chance would you like?”
 
“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. Gee⁸¹!” chuckling⁸², “if she'd heard what I said 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 exultation⁸³. 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 jovial⁸⁴, if crude youth, his unaffected acknowledgment of unaccustomedness to grandeur⁸⁵, even when in dilapidation⁸⁶, his delight in the novelty of the particular forms of everything about him—trees and sward, ferns and moss⁸⁷, his open self-congratulation, were without doubt cheerful things.
 
His exclamation⁸⁸, 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 likeness⁸⁹. 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, engraved⁹⁰ upon sarcophogi, would have allured⁹¹ 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 akin⁴⁵ to this in the vicar's courteously⁹² amiable, aquiline⁹³ countenance⁶² when he rose to shake hands with the young man on his entrance. Mr. Penzance was indeed slightly disappointed that his greeting was ............