“You'd have gone into the Guards, perhaps,” he said, “and drill would have made you carry yourself better. You're a good height. You'd have been a well-set-up fellow. I should have been rather proud of you. I can see you riding to the palace with the rest of them, sabres and chains clanking and glittering and helmet with plumes streaming. By Jove! I don't wonder at the effect they have on nursery-maids. On a sunny morning in spring they suggest knights in a fairytale.” “I should have liked it all right if I hadn't been born in Brooklyn,” grinned Tembarom. “But that starts you out in a different way. Do you think, if I'd been born the Marquis of Bel--what's his name--I should have been on to Palliser's little song and dance, and had as much fun out of it?” “On my soul, I believe you would,” the duke answered. “Brooklyn or Stone Hover Castle, I'm hanged if you wouldn't have been YOU.” CHAPTER XXIX After this came a pause. Each man sat thinking his own thoughts, which, while marked with difference in form, were doubtless subtly alike in the line they followed. During the silence T. Tembarom looked out at the late afternoon shadows lengthening themselves in darkening velvet across the lawns. At last he said: “I never told you that I've been reading some of the 'steen thousand books in the library. I started it about a month ago. And somehow they've got me going.” The slightly lifted eyebrows of his host did not express surprise so much as questioning interest. This man, at least, had discovered that one need find no cause for astonishment in any discovery that he had been doing a thing for some time for some reason or through some prompting of his own, and had said nothing whatever about it until he was what he called “good and ready.” When he was “good and ready” he usually revealed himself to the duke, but he was not equally expansive with others. “No, you have not mentioned it,” his grace answered, and laughed a little. “You frequently fail to mention things. When first we knew each other I used to wonder if you were naturally a secretive fellow; but you are not. You always have a reason for your silences.” “It took about ten years to kick that into me--ten good years, I should say.” T. Tembarom looked as if he were looking backward at many episodes as he said it. “Naturally, I guess, I must have been an innocent, blab-mouthed kid. I meant no harm, but I just didn't know. Sometimes it looks as if just not knowing is about the worst disease you can be troubled with. But if you don't get killed first, you find out in time that what you've got to hold on to hard and fast is the trick of 'saying nothing and sawing wood.'” The duke took out his memorandum-book and began to write hastily. T. Tembarom was quite accustomed to this. He even repeated his axiom for him. “Say nothing and saw wood,” he said. “It's worth writing down. It means 'shut your mouth and keep on working.'”