His original purpose had been wholly paternal and festive.  But, like many other intelligent people, he was not above the weakness of playing with a toy to amuse himself, on the theory that it would amuse a child.  His toys were crowns and miters and croziers and swords of state; and he had lingered over them, telling himself that the boy ought to see all the sights of London.  And at the end of the day, after a tremendous tea, he rather gave the game away by winding up with a visit in which hardly any human boy could be conceived as taking an interest—­an underground chamber supposed to have been a chapel, recently excavated on the north bank of the Thames, and containing literally nothing whatever but one old silver coin.  But the coin, to those who knew, was more solitary and splendid than the Koh-i-noor.  It was Roman, and was said to bear the head of St. Paul; and round it raged the most vital controversies about the ancient British Church.  It could hardly be denied, however, that the controversies left Summers Minor comparatively cold.

Indeed, the things that interested Summers Minor, and the things that did not interest him, had mystified and amused his uncle for several hours.  He exhibited the English schoolboy’s startling ignorance and startling knowledge—­knowledge of some special classification in which he can generally correct and confound his elders.  He considered himself entitled, at Hampton Court on a holiday, to forget the very names of Cardinal Wolsey or William of Orange; but he could hardly be dragged from some details about the arrangement of the electric bells in the neighboring hotel.  He was solidly dazed by Westminster Abbey, which is not so unnatural since that church became the lumber room of the larger and less successful statuary of the eighteenth century.  But he had a magic and minute knowledge of the Westminster omnibuses, and indeed of the whole omnibus system of London, the colors and numbers of which he knew as a herald knows heraldry.  He would cry out against a momentary confusion between a light-green Paddington and a dark-green Bayswater vehicle, as his uncle would at the identification of a Greek ikon and a Roman image.

“Do you collect omnibuses like stamps?” asked his uncle.  “They must need a rather large album.  Or do you keep them in your locker?”

“I keep them in my head,” replied the nephew, with legitimate firmness.

“It does you credit, I admit,” replied the clergyman.  “I suppose it were vain to ask for what purpose you have learned that out of a thousand things.  There hardly seems to be a career in it, unless you could be permanently on the pavement to prevent old ladies getting into the wrong bus.  Well, we must get out of this one, for this is our place.  I want to show you what they call St. Paul’s Penny.”

“Is it like St. Paul’s Cathedral?” asked the youth with resignation, as they alighted.