omic actors. But, no doubt, as soon as either began to act, the
naturalness of the accent and the manner and the mode of speech would
all vanish and something purely artificial would come up instead. Still,
he wondered how it came about that distinguished scholars, learned above
all things in folk-lore--a knowledge that surely ought to bring
something cosmopolitan with it--should be thus absolutely local, formal,
and typical of the least interesting and least appreciative form of
provincial character in America. 'It is really very curious,' he said to
himself. 'They seem to me more like men acting a stiff and conventional
American part than like real Americans. But, of course, I have never met
much of that type of American.' He soon put the question away, and
thought of other people than Professor Flick and Mr. Andrew J. Copping.
He was interested in them, however--he could not tell why--and he was
glad to have the chance of meeting them at dinner with dear old Sarrasin
at the Folk-Lore Club; and he was wondering whether they would relax at
all under the genial influence, and become a little less like type
Americans cut out of wood and moved by clockwork, and speaking by
mechanical contrivance. Ericson had a good deal of boyish interest in
life, and even in small things, left in him, for all his Dictatorship
and his projects, and his Gloria, and the growing sentiment that
sometimes made him feel with a start and a pang that it was beginning to
rival Gloria itself in its power of absorption.

CHAPTER XX

THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD

Sir Rupert Langley and his daughter had a small party staying with them
at their seaside place on the South-Western coast. Seagate Hall the
place was called. It was not much of a hall, in the grandiose sense of
the word. It had come to Sir Rupert through his mother, and was not a
big property in any sense--a little park and a fine old mansion, half
convent, half castle, made up the whole of it. But Helena was very fond
of it, and, indeed, much preferred it to the more vast and stately
inland country place. To please her, Sir Rupert consented to spend some
parts of every year there. It was a retreat to go to when the summer
heats or the autumnal heats of London were unendurable--at least to the
ordinary Briton, who is under the fond impression that London is really
hot sometimes, and who claps a puggaree on his chimney-pot hat the
moment there comes in late May a faint glimpse of s