further, the discussion might become
contentious.

Mr. Layton did not show any disposition to accept the gage of battle,
but turned to seek for his pupil.

"You 're looking for the Marquis, Mr. Layton," asked Mrs. Morris, "ain't
you? I think you'll find him in the shrubberies, for he said all this
only bored him, and he 'd go and look for a cool spot to smoke his
cigar."

"That's what it all comes to," said Morgan, as soon as Layton had left
the room; "that's the whole of it! You pay a fellow--a 'double first'
something or other from Oxford or Cambridge--five hundred a year to go
abroad with your son, and all he teaches him is to choose a cheroot."

"And smoke it, Tom," chimed in Mrs. Morgan.

"There ain't no harm in a weed, sir, I hope?" said Quackinboss. "The
thinkers of this earth are most of 'em smoking men. What do you say,
sir, to Humboldt, Niebuhr, your own Bulwer, and all our people, from
John C. Colhoun to Daniel Webster? When a man puts a cigar between his
lips, he as good as says, 'I 'm a-reflecting,--I 'm not in no ways to
be broke in upon.' It's his own fault, sir, if he does n't think, for he
has in a manner shut the door to keep out intruders."

"Filthy custom!" muttered Mr. Morgan, with a garbled sentence, in which
the word "America" was half audible.

"What's this he's saying about eating,--this Italian fellow?" said Mr.
Mosely, as a servant addressed him in a foreign language.

"It is a polite invitation to a luncheon," said Mrs. Morris, modestly
turning to her fellow-travellers for their decision.

"Do any of us know our host?" asked Mr. OShea. "He is a Sir William
Heathcote."

"There was a director of the Central Trunk line of that name, who failed
for half a million sterling," whispered Morgan; "should n't wonder if it
were he."

"All the more certain to give us a jolly feed, if he be!" chuckled
Mosely. "I vote we accept."

"That of course," said Mrs. Morris.

"Well, I know him, I reckon," drawled out Quackinboss; "and I rayther
suspect you owe this here politeness to _my_ company. Yes, sir!" said
he, half fiercely, to O'Shea, upon whose face a sort of incredulous
smile was breaking,--"yes, sir!"

"Being our own countryman, sir,--an Englishman,--I suspect," said Mr.
Morgan, with warmth, "that the hospitality has been extended to us on
wider grounds."

"But why should we dispute about the matter at all?" mildly remarked
Mrs. Morris. "Let us say yes, and be grateful."

"There's