even
those small domestic gatherings. And yet, might it not be that his
instinct for solitude at this season was a right instinct, at least
for him, and that to run counter to it would be in some degree
unacceptable to the Power that fashioned us? Thus he allowed himself
to go, as it were, his own way. After morning service, he sate down
to his Christmas fare alone, and then, when the simple meal was over,
would sit and think in his accustomed chair, falling perhaps into
one of those quiet dozes from which, because they seemed to be so
natural a result, so seemly a consummation, of his thoughts, he
did not regularly abstain. Later, he sallied forth, with a sense
of refreshment, for a brisk walk among the fens, the sedges, the
hedgerows, the reed-fringed pools, the pollard willows that would in
due course be putting forth their tender shoots of palest green. And
then, once more in his rooms, with the curtains drawn and the candles
lit, he would turn to his book-shelves and choose from among them some
old book that he knew and loved, or maybe some quite new book by that
writer whose works were most dear to him because in them he seemed
always to know so precisely what the author would say next, and
because he found in their fine-spun repetitions a singular repose,
a sense of security, an earnest of calm and continuity, as though he
were reading over again one of those wise copy-books that he had so
loved in boyhood, or were listening to the sounds made on a piano by
some modest, very conscientious young girl with a pale red pig-tail,
practising her scales, very gently, hour after hour, next door.

PERKINS AND MANKIND

_By_

H.G. W*LLS

Chapter XX

Sec.1.

It was the Christmas party at Heighton that was one of the
turning-points in Perkins' life. The Duchess had sent him a three-page
wire in the hyperbolical style of her class, conveying a vague
impression that she and the Duke had arranged to commit suicide
together if Perkins didn't "chuck" any previous engagement he had
made. And Perkins had felt in a slipshod sort of way--for at this
period he was incapable of ordered thought--he might as well be at
Heighton as anywhere....

The enormous house was almost full. There must have been upwards of
fifty people sitting down to every meal. Many of these were members of
the family. Perkins was able to recognise them by their unconvoluted
ears--the well-known Grifford ear, transmitted from one generation to