rd of
Agriculture, it is understood, will shortly issue a circular--er--on
these lines. Now you cannot effect the change thus indicated without
labour--"

"Or hosses."

"That there Board of Agriculture," put in the farmer, "is always
settin' up to know us farmers' business better than we d'know it
ourselves. Grow wheat--must we? All very well, an' for my country's
good I'm willin' enough, provided it can be done at a profit.
Will Government guarantee _that?_ . . . No, brother Pamphlett: what
you say about your callin', I says about mine. 'Business as usual'--
that's my word: an' let Obed here be a good son to his mother an'
bide at home, defyin' all the Germans in Christendom."

Mr Pamphlett, then, had spent his week-end in rural comfort, and with
the consciousness of being useful--a steadying influence in a
household threatened by youthful restlessness, which (Heaven knew)
might so easily turn to recklessness. His wife, too, was devotedly
attached to her sister, whose heart had always been liable to
palpitations. But he realised at sight of the letter, which had been
lying so long in the box, that a phrase is not everything: that
"business as usual," while it might serve as a charm or formula
against panic in the market-place, and even sustain in private many a
doubting soul accustomed to take things on trust, was an incantation
something less than adequate to calm the City of London, or the Bank
directors and their confidential clerks, who maybe had been working
in a frenzy through Sunday and Bank Holiday in their closed offices
at headquarters. For a moment Mr Pamphlett realised this, and it
gave him a scare. In the act of opening the letter he cast his eyes
around on the chance that a telegram had followed the letter,
demanding to know the cause that took him from his post at this
crisis. But there was no telegram. The envelope held two
enclosures. He scanned them hurriedly: the blood came back to his
face, and he was a man again.

The first enclosure merely acknowledged, in conventional words, the
receipt of certain returns posted by him last Friday. The second
ran--

New Bank Premises: Polpier Branch.

Dear Sir,--With reference to the above, the Board has had under
consideration your letter of the 23rd ult.; and directs me to
say that, in the present unsettled situation abroad, and the
consequent need of strict watchfulness over capital expenditure
(howev