ed as a unit into the booking-office, the
waiting-rooms, and other places, shut doors and windows and declaimed
aloud, while the incoming train whistled far down the line.

I pivoted round cross-legged on the back seat, like a Circassian beauty
beneath her veil, and saw Penfentenyou, his coat-collar over his ears,
dancing before a shut door and holding up handfuls of currency to a
silver-haired woman at an upper window, who only mouthed and shook her
head. A little child, carrying a kitten, came smiling round a corner.
Suddenly (but these things moved me no more than so many yards of
three-penny cinematograph-film) the kitten leaped spitting from her
arms, the child burst into tears, Penfentenyou, still dancing, snatched
her up and tucked her under his coat, the woman's countenance blanched,
the front door opened, Penfentenyou and the child pressed through, and I
was alone in an inhospitable world where every one was shutting windows
and calling children home.

A voice cried: 'You've frowtened 'em! You've frowtened 'em! Throw dust
on 'em and they'll settle!'

I did not desire to throw dust on any created thing. I needed both hands
for my draperies and two more for my stockings. Besides, the bees were
doing me no hurt. They recognised me as a member of the County
Bee-keepers' Association who had paid his annual subscription and was
entitled to a free seat at all apicultural exhibitions. The quiver and
the churn of the hireling car, or it might have been the lurching
banners and the arrogant big drum, inclined many of them to go up
street, and pay court to the advancing Foresters' band. So they went,
such as had not followed Mr. Lingnam in his flight toward the green, and
I looked out of two goggled eyes instead of half a one at the
approaching musicians, while I listened with both ears to the delayed
train's second whistle down the line beneath me.

The Forester's band no more knew what was coming than do troops under
sudden fire. Indeed, there were the same extravagant gestures and
contortions as attend wounds and deaths in war; the very same uncanny
cessations of speech--for the trombone was cut off at midslide, even as
a man drops with a syllable on his tongue. They clawed, they slapped,
they fled, leaving behind them a trophy of banners and brasses crudely
arranged round the big drum. Then that end of the street also shut its
windows, and the village, stripped of life, lay round me like a reef at
low tide. Though