before the fire smoking a pipe and looking thoughtfully at
nothing. He was, in fact, thinking, with that continuity characteristic
of a man who at fifty has won for himself a place of permanent
importance in the Home Office. Starting life in the Royal Engineers, he
still preserved something of a military look about his figure, and grave
visage with steady eyes and drooping moustache (both a shade grayer than
those of Felix), and a forehead bald from justness and knowing where to
lay his hand on papers. His face was thinner, his head narrower, than
his brother's, and he had acquired a way of making those he looked at
doubt themselves and feel the sudden instability of all their facts. He
was--as has been said--thinking. His brother Stanley had wired to him
that morning: "Am motoring up to-day on business; can you get Felix to
come at six o'clock and talk over the position at Tod's?" What position
at Tod's? He had indeed heard something vague--of those youngsters of
Tod's, and some fuss they were making about the laborers down there. He
had not liked it. Too much of a piece with the general unrest, and these
new democratic ideas that were playing old Harry with the country!
For in his opinion the country was in a bad way, partly owing to
Industrialism, with its rotting effect upon physique; partly to this
modern analytic Intellectualism, with its destructive and anarchic
influence on morals. It was difficult to overestimate the mischief of
those two factors; and in the approaching conference with his brothers,
one of whom was the head of an industrial undertaking, and the other
a writer, whose books, extremely modern, he never read, he was perhaps
vaguely conscious of his own cleaner hands. Hearing a car come to a halt
outside, he went to the window and looked out. Yes, it was Stanley!...

Stanley Freeland, who had motored up from Becket--his country place,
close to his plough works in Worcestershire--stood a moment on the
pavement, stretching his long legs and giving directions to his
chauffeur. He had been stopped twice on the road for not-exceeding the
limit as he believed, and was still a little ruffled. Was it not his
invariable principle to be moderate in speed as in all other things? And
his feeling at the moment was stronger even than usual, that the country
was in a bad way, eaten up by officialism, with its absurd limitations
of speed and the liberty of the subject, and the advanced ideas of
these new writers a