Chapter XXIII. Introducing G. Selden - Page 2

order in his ranch days. On the other side of his park fence there was evidently sitting, through some odd chance, an American of the cheery, casual order, not sufficiently polished by travel to have lost his picturesque national characteristics.

Mount Dunstan put a hand on a broken panel of fence and leaped over into the road.

A bicycle was lying upon the roadside grass, and on the bank, looking as though he had been sheltering himself under the hedge from the rain, sat a young man in a cheap bicycling suit. His features were sharply cut and keen, his cap was pushed back from his forehead, and he had a pair of shrewdly careless boyish eves.

Mount Dunstan liked the look of him, and seeing his natural start at the unheralded leap over the gap, which was quite close to him, he spoke.

"Good-morning," he said. "I am afraid I startled you."

"Good-morning," was the response. "It was a bit of a jolt seeing you jump almost over my shoulder. Where did you come from? You must have been just behind me."

"I was," explained Mount Dunstan. "Standing in the park listening to the robin."

The young fellow laughed outright.

"Say," he said, "that was pretty fine, wasn't it? Wasn't he getting it off his chest! He was an English robin, I guess. American robins are three or four times as big. I liked that little chap. He was a winner."

"You are an American?"

"Sure," nodding. "Good old Stars and Stripes for mine. First time I've been here. Came part for business and part for pleasure. Having the time of my life."

Mount Dunstan sat down beside him. He wanted to hear him talk. He had liked to hear the ranchmen talk. This one was of the city type, but his genial conversational wanderings would be full of quaint slang and good spirits. He was quite ready to converse, as was made manifest by his next speech.

"I'm biking through the country because I once had an old grandmother that was English, and she was always talking about English country, and how green things was, and how there was hedges instead of rail fences. She thought there was nothing like little old England. Well, as far as roads and hedges go, I'm with her. They're all right. I wanted a fellow I met crossing, to come with me, but he took a Cook's trip to Paris. He's a gay sort of boy. Said he didn't want any green lanes in his. He wanted Boolyvard." He laughed again and pushed his cap farther back on his forehead. "Said I wasn't much of a sport. I tell you, a chap that's got to earn his fifteen per, and live on it, can't be too much of a sport."

"Fifteen per?" Mount Dunstan repeated doubtfully.

His companion chuckled.

"I forgot I was talking to an Englishman. Fifteen dollars per week--that's what 'fifteen