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It was at this long board that we three brought up, and it was not long before Lonnegan and Mac were filling their plates, and with their own hands, too, with thin cuts of cold roast beef, chicken and slivers of ham, picking out the particular bread or toast or muffin they liked best, bringing the whole out under the low awning with its screen of roses, the swinging blossoms brushing their cheeks–some of them almost in their plates.

From where we sat over our boiled and baked–principally boiled–we could see not only the suite of rooms reserved for the great man and his party–one end of the inn, really, with a separate entrance–but we could see, too, part of the tap-room, with its rows of bottles, and could hear the laughter and raillery of the barmaid as she served the droppers-in and loungers-about. We caught, as well, the small square hall, flanked by the black-oak counter, behind which were banked bottles of various shapes and sizes, rows of pewter tankards and the like, the whole made comfortable with chairs cushioned in Turkey red, and never empty–the chairs, I mean; the tankards always were, or about to be.

This tap-room, I must tell you, is not a bar in the American sense, nor is the girl a barkeeper in any sense. It is the open club of the village, where everybody is welcome who is decent and agreeable. Even the curate drops in–not for his toddy, perhaps (although “You can’t generally sometimes almost always tell,” as Mac said), but for a word with anybody who happens to be about. And so does the big man of the village who owns the mill, and the gardener from Lord So-and-So’s estate, and the lord himself, for that matter, the groom taking his “bitter” from the side window, with one eye on his high stepper polished to a piano finish. All have a word or a good-morning or a joke with the barmaid. She isn’t at all the kind of a girl you think she is. Try it some day and you’ll discover your mistake. It’s Miss Nance, or Miss Ellen, or whatever else her parents fancied; or Miss Figgins, or Connors, or Pugby–but it is never Nance or Nell.

Our luncheon over, we joined the circle, the curate making room for Lonnegan, Mac stretching his big frame half over a settle.

“From the States, gentlemen, I should judge,” said the curate in a cheery tone–an athletic and Oxford-looking curate, his high white collar and high black waistcoat gripping a throat and chest that showed oars and cricket bats in every muscle. Young, too–not over forty.

I returned the courtesy by pleading guilty, and in extenuation, presented my comrades to the entire room, Lonnegan’s graceful body straightening to a present-arms posture as he grasped the outstretched hand of a brother athlete, and Mac’s heartiness capturing every one present, including the barmaid.

Then some compounded extracts were passed over the counter and the talk drifted as usual (I have never known it otherwise) into comparisons between the two “Hands Across the Sea” people. That an Englishman will ever really warm to a Frenchman or a German nobody who knows his race will believe, but he can be entirely comfortable (and the well-bred Englishman is the shyest man living) with the well-bred American.

Lonnegan as chief spokesman, in answer to an inquiry, and with an assurance born of mastery of his subject instantly recognized by the listeners, enlarged on the last architectural horror, the skyscraper, its cost, and on the occupations of the myriads of human bees who were hived between its floors, all so different from the more modest office structures around the Bank of England: adding that he had the plans of two on his drawing table at home, a statement which confirmed the good opinions they had formed of his familiarity with the subject.

I floated in with some comparisons touching upon the technic of the two schools of water-color painting, and, finding that the curate had a brother who was an R.A., backed out again and rested on my oars.