taking an interest--an underground chamber supposed to have been a
chapel, recently excavated on the north bank of the Thames, and
containing literally nothing whatever but one old silver coin. But
the coin, to those who knew, was more solitary and splendid than the
Koh-i-noor. It was Roman, and was said to bear the head of St. Paul;
and round it raged the most vital controversies about the ancient
British Church. It could hardly be denied, however, that the
controversies left Summers Minor comparatively cold.

Indeed, the things that interested Summers Minor, and the things
that did not interest him, had mystified and amused his uncle for
several hours. He exhibited the English schoolboy's startling
ignorance and startling knowledge--knowledge of some special
classification in which he can generally correct and confound his
elders. He considered himself entitled, at Hampton Court on a
holiday, to forget the very names of Cardinal Wolsey or William of
Orange; but he could hardly be dragged from some details about the
arrangement of the electric bells in the neighboring hotel. He was
solidly dazed by Westminster Abbey, which is not so unnatural since
that church became the lumber room of the larger and less successful
statuary of the eighteenth century. But he had a magic and minute
knowledge of the Westminster omnibuses, and indeed of the whole
omnibus system of London, the colors and numbers of which he knew as
a herald knows heraldry. He would cry out against a momentary
confusion between a light-green Paddington and a dark-green
Bayswater vehicle, as his uncle would at the identification of a
Greek ikon and a Roman image.

"Do you collect omnibuses like stamps?" asked his uncle. "They must
need a rather large album. Or do you keep them in your locker?"