a panic, and making bloody stands on spots of
extreme pastoral beauty, which they visited by coach and rail, looking
back on unfortified London with particular melancholy.

Rosamund's word may be trusted that she dropped the letter into a London
post-office in pursuance of her promise to Nevil. The singular fact was
that no answer to it ever arrived. Nevil, without a doubt of her honesty,
proposed an expedition to Paris; he was ordered to join his ship, and he
lay moored across the water in the port of Bevisham, panting for notice
to be taken of him. The slight of the total disregard of his letter now
affected him personally; it took him some time to get over this indignity
put upon him, especially because of his being under the impression that
the country suffered, not he at all. The letter had served its object:
ever since the transmission of it the menaces and insults had ceased.

But they might be renewed, and he desired to stop them altogether. His
last feeling was one of genuine regret that Frenchmen should have behaved
unworthily of the high estimation he held them in. With which he
dismissed the affair.

He was rallied about it when he next sat at his uncle's table, and had to
pardon Rosamund for telling.

Nevil replied modestly: 'I dare say you think me half a fool, sir. All I
know is, I waited for my betters to speak first. I have no dislike of
Frenchmen.'

Everard shook his head to signify, 'not half.' But he was gentle enough
in his observations. 'There's a motto, Ex pede Herculem. You stepped out
for the dogs to judge better of us. It's an infernally tripping motto for
a composite structure like the kingdom of Great Britain and Manchester,
boy Nevil. We can fight foreigners when the time comes.' He directed
Nevil to look home, and cast an eye on the cotton-spinners, with the
remark that they were binding us hand and foot to sell us to the biggest
buyer, and were not Englishmen but 'Germans and Jews, and quakers and
hybrids, diligent clerks and speculators, and commercial travellers, who
have raised a fortune from foisting drugged goods on an idiot
population.'

He loathed them for the curse they were to the country. And he was one of
the few who spoke out. The fashion was to pet them. We stood against
them; were halfhearted, and were beaten; and then we petted them, and bit
by bit our privileges were torn away. We made lords of them to catch
them, and they grocers of us by way of a return. 'Already,'