an inquiring glance at the
little heap of coins he still held before him.

Philip misinterpreted his glance. "Perhaps that's too much for you," he
suggested, looking severe; for if people cannot afford to pay for decent
rooms, they have no right to invade an aristocratic suburb, and bespeak
the attention of its regular residents.

"Oh, that's not it," the Alien put in, reading his tone aright. "The
money doesn't matter to me. As long as I can get a tidy room, with sun
and air, I don't mind what I pay. It's the guinea I can't quite remember
about for the moment. I looked it up, I know, in a dictionary at home;
but I'm afraid I've forgotten it. Let me see; it's twenty-one pounds to
the guinea, isn't it? Then I'm to pay about sixty-three pounds a week
for my lodgings."

This was the right spirit. He said it so simply, so seriously, so
innocently, that Philip was quite sure he really meant it. He was
prepared, if necessary, to pay sixty odd pounds a week in rent. Now, a
man like that is the proper kind of man for a respectable neighbourhood.
He'll keep a good saddle-horse, join the club, and play billiards
freely. Philip briefly explained to him the nature of his mistake,
pointing out to him that a guinea was an imaginary coin, unrepresented
in metal, but reckoned by prescription at twenty-one shillings. The
stranger received the slight correction with such perfect nonchalance,
that Philip at once conceived a high opinion of his wealth and solvency,
and therefore of his respectability and moral character. It was clear
that pounds and shillings were all one to him. Philip had been right,
no doubt, in his first diagnosis of his queer acquaintance as a man
of distinction. For wealth and distinction are practically synonyms in
England for one and the same quality, possession of the wherewithal.

As they parted, the stranger spoke again, still more at sea. "And are
there any special ceremonies to be gone through on taking up lodgings?"
he asked quite gravely. "Any religious rites, I mean to say? Any poojah
or so forth? That is," he went on, as Philip's smile broadened, "is
there any taboo to be removed or appeased before I can take up my
residence in the apartments?"

By this time Philip was really convinced he had to do with a
madman--perhaps a dangerous lunatic. So he answered rather testily, "No,
certainly not; how absurd! you must see that's ridiculous. You're in a
civilised country, not among Australian savages. All yo