shield a former favourite servant of Mars,
conjured the most diverting of interventions, in the shape of a young
woman in a poke-bonnet, and Skepsey, her squire, marching with a
dozen or so, informing bedevilled mankind of the hideousness of our
hymnification when it is not under secluding sanction of the Edifice,
and challengeing criticism; and that was hard by, and real English,
in the form of bludgeons, wielded by a battalion of the national idol
Bungay Beervat's boys; and they fell upon the hymners. Here you fill in
with pastoral similes. They struck the maid adored by Skepsey. And that
was the blow which slew them! Our little man drove into the press with
a pair of fists able to do their work. A valiant skiff upon a sea
of enemies, he was having it on the nob, and suddenly the Demerara
lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough to say, brains would have come.
The Bungays made a show of fight. No lack of blood in them, to stock a
raw shilling's worth or gush before Achilles rageing. You perceive the
picture, you can almost sing the ballad. We want only a few names of
the fallen. It was the carving of a maitre chef, according to Skepsey:
right-left-and point, with supreme precision: they fell, accurately
sliced from the joint. Having done with them, Dartrey tossed the
Demerara to Skepsey, and washed his hands of battle; and he let his
major go unscathed. Phlebotomy sufficient for the day!'

Nesta's ears hummed with the name of Major Worrell.

'Skepsey did come back to London with a rather damaged frontispiece,'
Victor said. 'He can't have joined those people?'

'They may suit one of your militant peacemakers,' interposed Fenellan.
'The most placable creatures alive, and the surest for getting-up a
shindy.'

'Suit him! They're the scandal of our streets.' Victor was pricked with
a jealousy of them for beguiling him of his trusty servant.

'Look at your country, see where it shows its vitality,' said Colney.
'You don't see elsewhere any vein in movement-movement,' he harped on
the word Victor constantly employed to express the thing he wanted
to see. 'Think of that, when the procession sets your teeth on
edge. They're honest foes of vice, and they move:--in England!
Pulpit-preaching has no effect. For gross maladies, gross remedies.
You may judge of what you are by the quality of the cure. Puritanism, I
won't attempt to paint--it would barely be decent; but compare it with
the spectacle of English frivolity, and you'