But, for a short time, Lord Dunholm remained to converse with Mount Dunstan.In a way the situation was delicate.To encounter by chance a neighbour whom one--for reasons--has not seen since his childhood, and to be equal to passing over and gracefully obliterating the intervening years, makes demand even upon finished tact.Lord Dunholm's world had been a large one, and he had acquired experience tending to the development of the most perfect methods.If G.Selden had chanced to be the magnet which had decided his course this special afternoon, Miss Vanderpoel it was who had stirred in him sufficient interest in Mount Dunstan to cause him to use the best of these methods when he found himself face to face with him.
He beautifully eliminated the years, he eliminated all but the facts that the young man's father and himself had been acquaintances in youth, that he remembered Mount Dunstan himself as a child, that he had heard with interest of his visit to America.Whatsoever the young man felt, he made no sign which presented obstacles.He accepted the eliminations with outward composure.He was a powerful-looking fellow, with a fine way of carrying his shoulders, and an eye which might be able to light savagely, but just now, at least, he showed nothing of the sulkiness he was accused of.
Lord Dunholm progressed admirably with him.He soon found that he need not be upon any strain with regard to the eliminations.The man himself could eliminate, which was an assistance.
They talked together when they turned to follow the others to the retreat of G.Selden.
"Have you bought a Delkoff?" Lord Dunholm inquired.
"If I could have afforded it, I should have bought one.""I think that we have come here with the intention of buying three.We did not know we required them until Miss Vanderpoel recited half a page of the catalogue to us.""Three will mean a `rake off' of fifteen dollars to G.
Selden," said Mount Dunstan.It was, he saw, necessary that he should explain the meaning of a "rake off," and he did so to his companion's entertainment.
The afternoon was a satisfactory one.They were all kind to G.Selden, and he on his part was an aid to them.In his innocence he steered three of them, at least, through narrow places into an open sea of easy intercourse.This was a good beginning.The junior assistant was recovering rapidly, and looked remarkably well.The doctor had told him that he might try to use his leg.The inside cabin of the cheap Liner and "little old New York" were looming up before him.But what luck he had had, and what a holiday! It had been enough to set a fellow up for ten years' work.It would set up the boys merely to be told about it.He didn't know what HE had ever done to deserve such luck as had happened to him.For the rest of his life he would he waving the Union Jack alongside of the Stars and Stripes.
Mr.Penzance it was who suggested that he should try the strength of the leg now.
"Yes," Mount Dunstan said."Let me help you."As he rose to go to him, Westholt good-naturedly got up also.They took their places at either side of his invalid chair and assisted him to rise and stand on his feet.
"It's all right, gentlemen.It's all right," he called out with a delighted flush, when he found himself upright."Ibelieve I could stand alone.Thank you.Thank you."He was able, leaning on Mount Dunstan's arm, to take a few steps.Evidently, in a short time, he would find himself no longer disabled.
Mr.Penzance had invited him to spend a week at the vicarage.He was to do this as soon as he could comfortably drive from the one place to the other.After receiving the invitation he had sent secretly to London for one of the Delkoffs he had brought with him from America as a specimen.
He cherished in private a plan of gently entertaining his host by teaching him to use the machine.The vicar would thus be prepared for that future in which surely a Delkoff must in some way fall into his hands.Indeed, Fortune having at length cast an eye on himself, might chance to favour him further, and in time he might be able to send a "high-class machine" as a grateful gift to the vicarage.Perhaps Mr.Penzance would accept it because he would understand what it meant of feeling and appreciation.
During the afternoon Lord Dunholm managed to talk a good deal with Mount Dunstan.There was no air of intention in his manner, nevertheless intention was concealed beneath its courteous amiability.He wanted to get at the man.Before they parted he felt he had, perhaps, learned things opening up new points of view.
.....
In the smoking-room at Dunholm that night he and his son talked of their chance encounter.It seemed possible that mistakes had been made about Mount Dunstan.One did not form a definite idea of a man's character in the course of an afternoon, but he himself had been impressed by a conviction that there had been mistakes.
"We are rather a stiff-necked lot--in the country--when we allow ourselves to be taken possession of by an idea,"Westholt commented.
"I am not at all proud of the way in which we have taken things for granted," was his father's summing up."It is, perhaps, worth observing," taking his cigar from his mouth and smiling at the end of it, as he removed the ash, "that, but for Miss Vanderpoel and G.Selden, we might never have had an opportunity of facing the fact that we may not have been giving fair play.And one has prided one's self on one's fair play."