nocked and knocked at Felix's heart mournfully, miserably.
He had a warmer feeling for his young nephew than he had ever had. Mr.
Pogram rejoined them soon, and they walked on together,

"Well?" said Felix.

Mr. Pogram answered in a somewhat grumpy voice:

"Not guilty, and reserve defence. You have influence, young man! Dumb as
a waiter. Poor devil!" And not another word did he say till they had
re-entered his garden.

Here the ladies, surrounded by many little Pograms, were having tea. And
seated next the little lawyer, whose eyes were fixed on Nedda, Felix was
able to appreciate that in happier mood he exhaled almost exclusively the
scent of lavender-water and cigars.

CHAPTER XXIII

On their way back to Becket, after the visit to Tryst, Felix and Nedda
dropped Derek half-way on the road to Joyfields. They found that the
Becket household already knew of the arrest. Woven into a dirge on the
subject of 'the Land,' the last town doings, and adventures on golf
courses, it formed the genial topic of the dinner-table; for the
Bulgarian with his carbohydrates was already a wonder of the past. The
Bigwigs of this week-end were quite a different lot from those of three
weeks ago, and comparatively homogeneous, having only three different
plans for settling the land question, none of which, fortunately,
involved any more real disturbance of the existing state of things than
the potato, brown-bread plan, for all were based on the belief held by
the respectable press, and constructive portions of the community, that
omelette can be made without breaking eggs. On one thing alone, the
whole house party was agreed--the importance of the question. Indeed, a
sincere conviction on this point was like the card one produces before
one is admitted to certain functions. No one came to Becket without it;
or, if he did, he begged, borrowed, or stole it the moment he smelled
Clara's special pot-pourri in the hall; and, though he sometimes threw it
out of the railway-carriage window in returning to town, there was
nothing remarkable about that. The conversational debauch of the first
night's dinner--and, alas! there were only two even at Becket during a
week-end--had undoubtedly revealed the feeling, which had set in of late,
that there was nothing really wrong with the condition of the
agricultural laborer, the only trouble being that the unreasonable fellow
did not stay on the land. It was believed that Henry Wiltram