The Family
—he cared as little as the Spanish Adventurers
themselves what Professor So-and-So thought about
them. With the fourth volume he began to be
aware that a few young men, scattered about the
United States and England, were intensely interested in his experiment. With the fifth and sixth,
they began to express their interest in lectures and
in print. The two last volumes brought him a certain international reputation and what were called
rewards—among them, the Oxford prize for history, with its five thousand pounds, which had built
him the new house into which he did not want to
move.
"Godfrey," his wife had gravely said one day, when she detected an ironical turn in some remark he made about the new house, "is there something you would rather have done with that money than to have built a house with it?"
"Nothing, my dear, nothing. If with that cheque I could have bought back the fun I had writing my history, you'd never have got your house. But one couldn't get that for twenty thousand dollars. The great pleasures don't come so cheap. There is nothing else, thank you."
-33-
