“Are you sure it isn’t Mrs. Steel?” asked one of the Venables girls, who had also ridden over on their bicycles.  “I heard you had a tremendously literary conversation when you dined with us.”

“We had, indeed!” said Langholm, with enthusiasm.  “And Mrs. Steel gave me one of the best ideas I ever had in my life; that’s another reason why I’m racing through this rubbish—­to take it in hand.”

It was Sybil to whom he was speaking, but at this point Rachel plunged into the conversation with the sister, Vera, which required an effort, since the elder Miss Venables was a young lady who had cultivated languor as a sign of breeding and sophistication.  Rachel, however, made the effort with such a will that the talk became general in a moment.

“I don’t know how anybody writes books,” was the elder young lady’s solitary contribution; her tone added that she did not want to know.

“Nor I,” echoed Sybil, “especially in a place like this, where nothing ever happens.  If I wanted to write a novel, I should go to Spain—­or Siberia—­or the Rocky Mountains—­where things do happen, according to all accounts.”

“Young lady,” returned the novelist, a twinkle in his eye, “I had exactly the same notion when I first began, and I remember what a much older hand said to me when I told him I was going down to Cornwall for romantic background.  ‘Young man,’ said he, ’have you placed a romance in your mother’s backyard yet?’ I had not, but I did so at once instead of going to Cornwall, and sounder advice I never had in my life.  Material, like charity, begins at home; nor need you suppose that nothing ever happens down here.  That is the universal idea of the native about his or her own heath, but I can assure you it isn’t the case at all.  Only just now, on my way here, I saw a scene and a character that might have been lifted bodily out of Bret Harte.”

Sybil Venables clamored for particulars, while her sister resigned herself to further weariness of the flesh.  Rachel put down her cup and leant forward with curiously expectant eyes.  They were sitting in the cool, square hall, with doors shut or open upon every hand, and the gilded gallery overhead.  Statuettes and ferns, all reflected in the highly polished marble floor, added a theatrical touch which was not out of keeping with a somewhat ornate interior.

“It was the character,” continued Langholm, “who was making the scene; and a stranger creature I have never seen on English earth.  He wore what I believe they call a Crimean shirt, and a hat like a stage cowboy; and he informed all passers that he was knocking down his check!”

“What?” cried Rachel and Sybil in one breath, but in curiously different tones.

“Knocking down his check,” repeated Langholm.  “It’s what they do in the far west or the bush or somewhere—­but I rather fancy it’s the bush—­when they get arrears of wages in a lump in one check.”

“And where did you see all this?” inquired Rachel, whose voice was very quiet, but her hazel eyes alight with a deeper interest than the story warranted.