“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.

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 likeness.  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, engraved upon sarcophogi, would have allured 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!”