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Mac, more or less concerned over the expected arrival, and anxious that his listeners should not consider the magnate as a fair example of his countrymen, launched out upon the absence of all class distinctions at home-one man as good as another–making Presidents out of farmers, Senators out of cellar diggers, every man a king–that sort of thing.

When Mac had finished–and these Englishmen let you finish–the mill-owner, a heavy, red-faced man (out-of-doors exercise, not Burgundy), with a gray whisker dabbed high up on each cheek, and a pair of keen, merry eyes, threw back the lapels of his velveteen coat (riding-trousers to match), and answered slowly:

“You’ll excuse me, sir, but I stopped a while in the States, and I can’t agree with you. We take off our caps here to a lord because he is part of our national system, but we never bow down to the shillings he keeps in his strong box. You do.”

The lists were “open” now. Mac fought valiantly, the curate helping him once in a while; Lonnegan putting in a word for the several professions as being always exempt–brains, not money, counting in their case–Mac winning the first round with:

“Not all of us, my dear sir; not by a long shot. When any of our people turn sycophants, it is you English who have coached them. A lord with you is a man who doesn’t have to work. So, when any of us come over here to play–and that’s what we generally come for–everybody, to our surprise, kotows to us, and we acknowledge the attention by giving a shilling to whoever holds out his hand. Now, nobody ever kotows to us at home. We’d get suspicious right away if they did and shift our wallets to the other pocket; not that we are not generous, but we don’t like that sort of thing. We do here–that is, some of us do, because it marks the difference in rank, and we all, being kings, are tickled to death that your flunkies recognize that fact the moment they clap eyes on us.”

Lonnegan looked at Mac curiously. The dear fellow must be talking through his hat.

“Now, I got a sudden shock on the steamer on my way home last fall, and from an American gentleman, too–one of the best, if he was in tarpaulins–and I didn’t get over it for a week. No kotow about him, I tell you. I wanted a newspaper the worst way, and was the first man to strike the Sandy Hook pilot as he threw his sea-drenched leg over the rail. ‘Got a morning paper?’ I asked. ‘Yes, in my bag.’ And he dumped the contents on the deck and handed me a paper. I had been away from home a year, mostly in England, and hadn’t seen anybody, from a curator in a museum to the manager of an estate, who wouldn’t take a shilling when it was offered him, and so from sheer force of habit I dropped a trade dollar into his hand. You ought to have seen his face. ‘What’s this for?’ he asked. ‘No use to me.’ And he handed it back. I wanted to go out and kick myself full of holes, I was so ashamed. And, after all, it wasn’t my fault. I learned that from you Englishmen.”

The toot-toot of an automobile cut short the discussion.

The American millionaire had arrived!

Everybody now started on the run: landlord, two maids in blue dresses with white cap strings flying, three hostlers, two garage men, four dogs, all bowing and scraping–all except the dogs.

“What did I tell you?” laughed Mac, tapping the curate’s broad chest with the end of his plump finger. “That’s the way you all do. With us a porter would help him out, a hotel clerk assign him a room, and that would end it. The next morning the only man to do him reverence would be the waiter behind his chair figuring for the extra tip. Look at them. Same old kotow. No wonder he thinks himself a duke.”