There was something
almost akin to this in the vicar's courteously amiable, aquiline
countenance when he rose to shake hands with the young man on his
entrance. Mr. Penzance was indeed slightly disappointed that his
greeting was not responded to by some characteristic phrasing. His
American was that of Sam Slick and Artemus Ward, Punch and various
English witticisms in anecdote. Life at the vicarage of Dunstan had not
revealed to him that the model had become archaic.
The revelation dawned upon him during his intercourse with G. Selden.
The young man in his cheap bicycling suit was a new development. He was
markedly unlike an English youth of his class, as he was neither shy,
nor laboriously at his ease. That he was at his ease to quite an amazing
degree might perhaps have been remotely resented by the insular mind,
accustomed to another order of bearing in its social inferiors, had it
not been so obviously founded on entire unconsciousness of self, and
so mingled with open appreciation of the unanticipated pleasures of the
occasion. Nothing could have been farther from G. Selden than any desire
to attempt to convey the impression that he had enjoyed the hospitality
of persons of rank on previous occasions.
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