Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half the peerage of
Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if you please, he's
descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an American, but he can show
a clear descent bang down from Alfred the Great! I think the most
exquisite, the most subtle and delicate pleasure I have ever experienced
has been to see English people, people of yesterday, cheerfully
patronizing him."

"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, grimly.
"I had never known that there was blood in America. Does this prodigious
personage talk through his nose?"

"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did--a little--just enough to
smack of his soil, to possess local colour. No, he talks for all the
world like you or me,--which exposes him to compliments in England. 'An
American? Really?' our tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality
'Upon my word, I should never have suspected it.'"

"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady Blanchemain.

"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her favours, she's
withheld none from him."

"Then he's good-looking, too?"

"He looks like a Man," said John.

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If _I_ had received a wire from a
creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd answer it."