lar, surged, shrieked (less loudly than Mrs. Bellamy at the window),
and swept on. That which came out behind her was, as Holford truly
observed, no joy-wheel. Mr. Lingnam swung round the big drum in the
market-place and thundered back, shouting: 'Leave it alone. It's
my meat!'

'Mince-meat, 'e means,' said Holford after this second trituration. 'You
couldn't say now it 'ad ever _been_ one, could you?'

Mrs. Bellamy opened the window and spoke. It appears she had only
charged for damage to the bicycle, not for the entire machine which Mr.
Lingnam was ruthlessly gleaning, spoke by spoke, from the highway and
cramming into the slack of the hood. At last he answered, and I have
never seen a man foam at the mouth before. 'If you don't stop, I shall
come into your house--in this car--and drive upstairs and--kill you!'

She stopped; he stopped. Holford took the wheel, and we got away. It was
time, for the sun shone after the storm, and Deborah beneath the tiles
and the eaves already felt its reviving influence compel her to her
interrupted labours of federation. We warned the village policeman at
the far end of the street that he might have to suspend traffic again.
The proprietor of the giddy-go-round, swings, and cocoanut-shies wanted
to know from whom, in this world or another, he could recover damages.
Mr. Lingnam referred him most directly to Mrs. Bellamy.... Then we
went home.

After dinner that evening Mr. Lingnam rose stiffly in his place to make
a few remarks on the Federation of the Empire on the lines of
Co-ordinated, Offensive Operations, backed by the Entire Effective
Forces, Moral, Military, and Fiscal, of Permanently Mobilised
Communities, the whole brought to bear, without any respect to the
merits of any _casus belli_, instantaneously, automatically, and
remorselessly at the first faint buzz of war.

'The trouble with Us,' said he, 'is that We take such an infernally long
time making sure that We are right that We don't go ahead when things
happen. For instance, I ought to have gone ahead instead of pulling up
when I hit that bicycle.'

'But you were in the wrong, Lingnam, when you turned to the right,' I
put in.

'I don't want to hear any more of your damned, detached, mugwumping
excuses for the other fellow,' he snapped.

'Now you're beginning to see things,' said Penfentenyou. 'I hope you
won't backslide when the swellings go down.'

THE SONG OF SEVEN CITIES

I was Lord of Cities very