a hopelessly lost cause is so often able to
inspire. He babbled incessantly about himself and the accessory
futilities of his life in short, neat, complacent sentences, and in a
voice that Ronald Storre said reminded one of a fat bishop blessing a
butter-making competition. While he babbled he kept his eyes fastened on
his listeners to observe the impression which his important little
announcements and pronouncements were making. On the present occasion he
was pattering forth a detailed description of the upholstery and fittings
of his new music-room.

"All the hangings, violette de Parme, all the furniture, rosewood. The
only ornament in the room is a replica of the Mozart statue in Vienna.
Nothing but Mozart is to be played in the room. Absolutely, nothing but
Mozart."

"You will get rather tired of that, won't you?" said Cicely, feeling that
she was expected to comment on this tremendous announcement.

"One gets tired of everything," said Plarsey, with a fat little sigh of
resignation. "I can't tell you how tired I am of Rubenstein, and one day
I suppose I shall be tired of Mozart, and violette de Parme and rosewood.
I never thought it possible that I could ever tire of jonquils, and now I
simply won't have one in the house. Oh, the scene the other day because
some one brought some jonquils into the house! I'm afraid I was
dreadfully rude, but I really couldn't help it."

He could talk like this through a long summer day or a long winter
evening.

Yeovil belonged to a race forbidden to bear arms. At the moment he would
gladly have contented himself with the weapons with which nature had
endowed him, if he might have kicked and pommelled the abhorrent specimen
of male humanity whom he saw before him.

Instead he broke into the conversation with an inspired flash of
malicious untruthfulness.

"It is wonderful," he observed carelessly, "how popular that Viennese
statue of Mozart has become. A friend who inspects County Council Art
Schools tells me you find a copy of it in every class-room you go into."

It was a poor substitute for physical violence, but it was all that
civilisation allowed him in the way of relieving his feelings; it had,
moreover, the effect of making Plarsey profoundly miserable.

CHAPTER XII: THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

The train bearing Yeovil on his visit to Torywood slid and rattled
westward through the hazy dreamland of an English summer landscape. Seen
from the trai