trains flew by almost
continuously, with a bee-like drone in the day and a flutter of
strong wings at night. The son of Merton Sargent had good right to be
interested in them. He owned controlling interests in several thousand
miles of track,--not permanent way,--built on altogether different
plans, where locomotives eternally whistled for grade-crossings, and
parlor-cars of fabulous expense and unrestful design skated round
curves that the Great Buchonian would have condemned as unsafe in a
construction-line. From the edge of his lawn he could trace the chaired
metals falling away, rigid as a bowstring, into the valley of the Prest,
studded with the long perspective of the block signals, buttressed
with stone, and carried, high above all possible risk, on a forty-foot
embankment.

Left to himself, he would have builded a private car, and kept it at the
nearest railway-station, Amberley Royal, five miles away. But those into
whose hands he had committed himself for his English training had little
knowledge of railways and less of private cars. The one they knew was
something that existed in the scheme of things for their convenience.
The other they held to be "distinctly American"; and, with the
versatility of his race, Wilton Sargent had set out to be just a little
more English than the English.

He succeeded to admiration. He learned not to redecorate Holt Hangars,
though he warmed it; to leave his guests alone; to refrain from
superfluous introductions; to abandon manners of which he had great
store, and to hold fast by manner which can after labour be acquired. He
learned to let other people, hired for the purpose, attend to the duties
for which they were paid. He learned--this he got from a ditcher on
the estate--that every man with whom he came in contact had his decreed
position in the fabric of the realm, which position he would do well
to consult. Last mystery of all, he learned to golf--well: and when an
American knows the innermost meaning of "Don't press, slow back,
and keep your eye on the ball," he is, for practical purposes,
denationalised.

His other education proceeded on the pleasantest lines. Was he
interested in any conceivable thing in heaven above, or the earth
beneath, or the waters under the earth? Forthwith appeared at his table,
guided by those safe hands into which he had fallen, the very men who
had best said, done, written, explored, excavated, built, launched,
created, or studied that o