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IX.

A DOUBLE-MINDED GENTLEMAN

CHAPTER I.

ICE people those Groomes."

Dawson had driven me over to the station, and was staying to see me off. I made this remark to him as we were standing on the platform waiting for the train.

"They are." He paused to give a vigorous puff or two at his pipe. "Nice people of the good old sort Old Groome's a trump. He's not—well, he's not fin de siècle you know, and all that humbug; for it is humbug, most of it He puts on no side. He makes no pretension to be what he isn't. I don't say that he's either literary, musical, or artistic, although most people seem bound to at any rate pretend to be either one or the other nowadays. He's not a swell in any sense, and, what's more, he knows he isn't; but he's a homely, honest, hearty, hospitable English country gentleman, that's what old Groome is, sir. And when you come to think of it, I don't believe you'll find that a man can be anything much better." As the train bore me onwards, in my own mind 222