“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. Gee!” chuckling, “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 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.