Theatrical companies that have
gone to pieces on the road, you know. Perhaps--" with a sudden thought,
"you're an actor. Are you?"
Mount Dunstan admitted to himself that he liked the junior assistant of
Jones immensely. A more ingenuously common young man, a more innocent
outsider, it had never been his blessed privilege to enter into close
converse with, but his very commonness was a healthy, normal thing.
It made no effort to wreathe itself with chaplets of elegance; it
was beautifully unaware that such adornment was necessary. It enjoyed
itself, youthfully; attacked the earning of its bread with genial pluck,
and its good-natured humanness had touched him. He had enjoyed his talk;
he wanted to hear more of it. He was not in the mood to let him go his
way. To Penzance, who was to lunch with him to-day, he would present a
study of absorbing interest.
"No," he answered. "I'm not an actor. My name is Mount Dunstan, and this
place," with a nod over his shoulder, "is mine--but I'm up against it,
nevertheless."
Selden looked a trifle disgusted. He began to pick up his bicycle. He
had given a degree of natural sympathy, and this was an English chap's
idea of a joke.
"I'm the Prince of Wales, myself," he remarked, "and my mother's
expecting me to lunch at Windsor.
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