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 entirely parallel, in his mind, with the heads of any great house in England.  They wielded the power of the world, and could wield it for evil or good, as any prince or duke might.  Mount Dunstan saw the parallel.

“I apologise, all right,” G. Selden ended genially.

“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,” stolidly, “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.  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.