lloc's echo," Gilbert protested. "I should feel as if I were listening
to his master's voice. Besides, he's fatter than Belloc and he's a
damned jiggery-pokery Papist too! Why don't these chaps go and cover
themselves with blue woad and play mumbo-jumbo tricks before the village
idol! That 'ud be about as intelligent as their Popery!" They intended
to ask Lord Hugh Cecil to talk to them about Conservatism, but when they
read his book on the subject they decided that such a Conservative was
utterly damnable ... and so they asked his brother, Lord Robert,
instead, and found that his point of view, although much more human and
less logical than that of Lord Hugh, was antipathetic to theirs.

"Let's get Garvin!" Gilbert suggested, when they discussed the question
of a more improved Tory than Lord Robert. "The Cecils are no good ...
they're too superstitious!" which was his way of saying that they were
too religious. "They're worse than priests: they're ... they're laymen!
I propose that we ask Garvin to come and talk to us. He seems to be
shoving the Tories all over the place!" So they invited the editor of
the _Observer_ to dine and talk with them, and he came, a quick, eager,
intense man, with large, starting eyes, who spoke so quickly that his
words became entangled and were wrecked on his teeth. They liked him,
but they were dubious of his right to represent the Tory spirit. It
seemed to them that this eager, thrusting-forward man, who banged the
table in his earnestness, might carry a political party off its feet in
his passion, but they were afraid that the feet would trail, that the
party would be reluctant to be lifted. "He's Irish," said Roger in
judgment.

"It isn't any good," Gilbert remarked, when Garvin had gone home,
"trying to persuade the English to spread their wings. They haven't got
any. Garvin 'ud do better if he'd hold a carrot in front of them ...
they'd follow that. Quinny," he added, "you ought to ask Garvin for a
job on the _Observer_. They say he can't resist an Irishman!"

"I will," Henry replied.

"Oh, and there's a chance of doing book reviews on the _Morning
Report_!" Geoffrey Grant said. "I told Leonard, the literary editor,
about you, and he said he'd look at you if you went round one day!"

"I'll go and look at him," Henry answered.

2

While they were spending their evenings in this fashion, Henry, working
steadily in the mornings, completely revised his novel. Gilbert, working
le