at dinner. 'Only an Englishman could have written that letter at
this present juncture.'

'It reminded me of a tourist in the Cave of the Winds under Niagara.
Just one figure in a mackintosh. But perhaps you saw our photo?' I
said proudly.

'Yes,' Bat replied. 'I've been to Niagara, too. And how's Huckley taking
it?'

'They don't quite understand, of course,' said Ollyett. 'But it's
bringing pots of money into the place. Ever since the motor-bus
excursions were started--'

'I didn't know they had been,' said Pallant.

'Oh yes. Motor char-a-bancs--uniformed guides and key-bugles included.
They're getting a bit fed up with the tune there nowadays,'
Ollyett added.

'They play it under his windows, don't they?' Bat asked. 'He can't stop
the right of way across his park.'

'He cannot,' Ollyett answered. 'By the way, Woodhouse, I've bought that
font for you from the sexton. I paid fifteen pounds for it.'

'What am I supposed to do with it?' asked Woodhouse.

'You give it to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is fourteenth-century
work all right. You can trust me.'

'Is it worth it--now?' said Pallant. 'Not that I'm weakening, but merely
as a matter of tactics?'

'But this is true,' said Ollyett. 'Besides, it is my hobby, I always
wanted to be an architect. I'll attend to it myself. It's too serious
for _The Bun_ and miles too good for _The Cake_.'

He broke ground in a ponderous architectural weekly, which had never
heard of Huckley. There was no passion in his statement, but mere fact
backed by a wide range of authorities. He established beyond doubt that
the old font at Huckley had been thrown out, on Sir Thomas's
instigation, twenty years ago, to make room for a new one of Bath stone
adorned with Limoges enamels; and that it had lain ever since in a
corner of the sexton's shed. He proved, with learned men to support him,
that there was only one other font in all England to compare with it. So
Woodhouse bought it and presented it to a grateful South Kensington
which said it would see the earth still flatter before it returned the
treasure to purblind Huckley. Bishops by the benchful and most of the
Royal Academy, not to mention 'Margaritas ante Porcos,' wrote fervently
to the papers. _Punch_ based a political cartoon on it; the _Times_ a
third leader, 'The Lust of Newness'; and the _Spectator_ a scholarly and
delightful middle, 'Village Hausmania.' The vast amused outside world
said in all its tongues and ty