a Fremonter."

"I am, I assure you."

"Thought as much, by your looks. Don't see what else an honest man can
be just now."

Stangrave laughed. "I hope every one thinks so in England."

"Trust us for that, sir! We know a man when we see him here; I hope
they'll do the same across the water."

There was silence for a minute or two; and then Mark began again.

"Look!--there's the farm; that's my lord's. I should like to show
you the short-horns there, sir!--all my Lord Ducie's and Sir Edward
Knightley's stock; bought a bull-calf of him the other day myself for
a cool hundred, old fool that I am. Never mind, spreads the breed. And
here are mills--four pair of new stones. Old Whit don't know herself
again. But I dare say they look small enough to you, sir, after your
American water-power."

"What of that? It is just as honourable in you to make the most of a
small river, as in us to make the most of a large one."

"You speak like a book, sir. By the by, if you think of taking home a
calf or two, to improve your New England breed--there are a good many
gone across the sea in the last few years--I think we could find you
three or four beauties, not so very dear, considering the blood."

"Thanks; but I really am no farmer."

"Well--no offence, I hope: but I am like your Yankees in one thing,
you see;--always have an eye to a bit of business. If I didn't, I
shouldn't be here now."

"How very tasteful!--our own American shrubs! what a pity that they
are not in flower! What is this," asked Stangrave,--"one of your
noblemen's parks?"

And they began to run through the cutting in Minchampstead Park, where
the owner has concealed the banks of the rail for nearly half a mile,
in a thicket of azaleas, rhododendrons, and clambering roses.

"All!--isn't it pretty? His lordship let us have the land for a song;
only bargained that we should keep low, not to spoil his view; and so
we did; and he's planted our cutting for us. I call that a present to
the county, and a very pretty one too! Ah, give me these new brooms
that sweep clean!"

"Your old brooms, like Lord Vieuxbois, were new brooms once, and swept
well enough five hundred years ago," said Stangrave, who had that
filial reverence for English antiquity which sits so gracefully upon
many highly educated and far-sighted Americans.

"Worn to the stumps, now, too many of them, sir; and want new-hething,
as our broom-squires would say; and I doubt whether most of them a