esent no arrest has been made. The
authorities are in doubt whether the occurrence has any relation with
recent similar outbreaks in the eastern counties."

So Stanley read at breakfast, in his favorite paper; and the little
leader thereon:

"The outbreak of fire on Sir Gerald Malloring's Worcestershire property
may or may not have any significance as a symptom of agrarian unrest. We
shall watch the upshot with some anxiety. Certain it is that unless the
authorities are prepared to deal sharply with arson, or other cases of
deliberate damage to the property of landlords, we may bid good-by to
any hope of ameliorating the lot of the laborer"

--and so on.

If Stanley had risen and paced the room there would have been a good
deal to be said for him; for, though he did not know as much as Felix of
the nature and sentiments of Tod's children, he knew enough to make any
but an Englishman uneasy. The fact that he went on eating ham, and said
to Clara, "Half a cup!" was proof positive of that mysterious quality
called phlegm which had long enabled his country to enjoy the peace of a
weedy duck-pond.

Stanley, a man of some intelligence--witness his grasp of the secret
of successful plough-making (none for the home market!)--had often
considered this important proposition of phlegm. People said England
was becoming degenerate and hysterical, growing soft, and nervous, and
towny, and all the rest of it. In his view there was a good deal of bosh
about that! "Look," he would say, "at the weight that chauffeurs put
on! Look at the House of Commons, and the size of the upper classes!" If
there were growing up little shrill types of working men and Socialists,
and new women, and half-penny papers, and a rather larger crop of
professors and long-haired chaps--all the better for the rest of the
country! The flesh all these skimpy ones had lost, solid people had
put on. The country might be suffering a bit from officialism, and the
tendency of modern thought, but the breed was not changing. John Bull
was there all right under his moustache. Take it off and clap on little
side-whiskers, and you had as many Bulls as you liked, any day. There
would be no social upheaval so long as the climate was what it was! And
with this simple formula, and a kind of very deep-down throaty chuckle,
he would pass to a subject of more immediate importance. There was
something, indeed, rather masterly in his grasp of the fact that rain
might be