e
from pessimism. Take fewer men and give me an hour's fun. Really and
truly, James, if you collected coins or humming-birds, and I could buy
one with the price of your road, I would buy it. I collect
incidents--those rare, those precious things. Let me have one. Pay a
few pounds for it. Give these Notting Hillers a chance. Let them
alone."

"Auberon," said Barker, kindly, forgetting all royal titles in a rare
moment of sincerity, "I do feel what you mean. I have had moments when
these hobbies have hit me. I have had moments when I have sympathised
with your humours. I have had moments, though you may not easily
believe it, when I have sympathised with the madness of Adam Wayne.
But the world, Auberon, the real world, is not run on these hobbies.
It goes on great brutal wheels of facts--wheels on which you are the
butterfly; and Wayne is the fly on the wheel."

Auberon's eyes looked frankly at the other's.

"Thank you, James; what you say is true. It is only a parenthetical
consolation to me to compare the intelligence of flies somewhat
favourably with the intelligence of wheels. But it is the nature of
flies to die soon, and the nature of wheels to go on for ever. Go on
with the wheel. Good-bye, old man."

And James Barker went on, laughing, with a high colour, slapping his
bamboo on his leg.

The King watched the tail of the retreating regiment with a look of
genuine depression, which made him seem more like a baby than ever.
Then he swung round and struck his hands together.

"In a world without humour," he said, "the only thing to do is to eat.
And how perfect an exception! How can these people strike dignified
attitudes, and pretend that things matter, when the total
ludicrousness of life is proved by the very method by which it is
supported? A man strikes the lyre, and says, 'Life is real, life is
earnest,' and then goes into a room and stuffs alien substances into a
hole in his head. I think Nature was indeed a little broad in her
humour in these matters. But we all fall back on the pantomime, as I
have in this municipal affair. Nature has her farces, like the act of
eating or the shape of the kangaroo, for the more brutal appetite. She
keeps her stars and mountains for those who can appreciate something
more subtly ridiculous." He turned to his equerry. "But, as I said
'eating,' let us have a picnic like two nice little children. Just run
and bring me a table and a dozen courses or so, and plenty of
cha