“'St. John preaching in the Wilderness!'” said Quackinboss; “too tame for my taste. He don't seem to roll up his sleeves to the work,--does he?” “It's not stump-oratory, surely?” said Layton, with a quiet smile. “Ain't it, though! Well, stranger, I'm in a considerable unmixed error if it is not! You'd like to maintain that because a man does n't rise up from a velvet cushion and lay his hand upon a grand railing, all carved with grotesque intricacies, all his sentiments must needs be commonplace and vulgar; but I 'm here to tell you, sir, that you 'd hear grander things, nobler things, and greater things from a moss-covered old tree- stump in a western pine-forest, by the mouth of a plain, hardy son of hard toil, than you've often listened to in what you call your place in Parliament Now, that's a fact!” There was that amount of energy in the way these words were uttered that seemed to say, if carried further, the discussion might become contentious. Mr. Layton did not show any disposition to accept the gage of battle, but turned to seek for his pupil. “You 're looking for the Marquis, Mr. Layton,” asked Mrs. Morris, “ain't you? I think you'll find him in the shrubberies, for he said all this only bored him, and he 'd go and look for a cool spot to smoke his cigar.” “That's what it all comes to,” said Morgan, as soon as Layton had left the room; “that's the whole of it! You pay a fellow--a 'double first' something or other from Oxford or Cambridge--five hundred a year to go abroad with your son, and all he teaches him is to choose a cheroot.” “And smoke it, Tom,” chimed in Mrs. Morgan. “There ain't no harm in a weed, sir, I hope?” said Quackinboss. “The thinkers of this earth are most of 'em smoking men. What do you say, sir, to Humboldt, Niebuhr, your own Bulwer, and all our people, from John C. Colhoun to Daniel Webster? When a man puts a cigar between his lips, he as good as says, 'I 'm a-reflecting,--I 'm not in no ways to be broke in upon.' It's his own fault, sir, if he does n't think, for he has in a manner shut the door to keep out intruders.” “Filthy custom!” muttered Mr. Morgan, with a garbled sentence, in which the word “America” was half audible. “What's this he's saying about eating,--this Italian fellow?” said Mr. Mosely, as a servant addressed him in a foreign language. “It is a polite invitation to a luncheon,” said Mrs. Morris, modestly turning to her fellow-travellers for their decision. “Do any of us know our host?” asked Mr. OShea. “He is a Sir William Heathcote.” “There was a director of the Central Trunk line of that name, who failed for half a million sterling,” whispered Morgan; “should n't wonder if it were he.” “All the more certain to give us a jolly feed, if he be!” chuckled Mosely. “I vote we accept.” “That of course,” said Mrs. Morris.