their
secretary had naturally no initiative that appeared, no importance that
was taken account of. In these respects, no less than in the others, he
justified Mr Cruickshank's selection. He did his work as unobtrusively
as he did it admirably well; and for the rest he was just washed
about, carried, hither and thither, generally on the tops of omnibuses,
receptive, absorbent, mostly silent. He did try once or twice to talk to
the bus drivers--he had been told it was a thing to do if you wanted
to get hold of the point of view of a particular class; but the thick
London idiom defeated him, and he found they grew surly when he asked
them too often to repeat their replies. He felt a little surly himself
after a while, when they asked him, as they nearly always did, if he
wasn't an American. "Yes," he would say in the end, "but not the United
States kind," resenting the necessity of explaining to the Briton beside
him that there were other kinds. The imperial idea goes so quickly from
the heart to the head. He felt compelled, nevertheless, to mitigate his
denial to the bus drivers.

"I expect it's the next best thing." he would say, "but it's only the
next best."

It was as if he felt charged to vindicate the race, the whole of
Anglo-Saxondom, there in his supreme moment, his splendid position, on
the top of an omnibus lumbering west out of Trafalgar Square.

One introduction of his own he had. Mrs Milburn had got it for him from
the rector, Mr Emmett, to his wife's brother, Mr Charles Chafe, who
had interests in Chiswick and a house in Warwick Gardens. Lorne put off
presenting the letter--did not know, indeed, quite how to present it,
till his stay in London was half over. Finally he presented himself with
it, as the quickest way, at the office of Mr Chafe's works at Chiswick.
He was cordially received, both there and in Warwick Gardens, where he
met Mrs Chafe and the family, when he also met Mr Alfred Hesketh. Lorne
went several times to the house in Warwick Gardens, and Hesketh--a
nephew--was there on the very first occasion. It was an encounter
interesting on both sides. He--Hesketh--was a young man with a good
public school and a university behind him, where his very moderate
degree, however, failed to represent the activity of his mind or the
capacity of his energy. He had a little money of his own, and no present
occupation; he belonged to the surplus. He was not content to belong to
it; he cast about him a good