ed Mr. Russell, much pleased. It was twenty years
since he had even remembered that he possessed a look of his own.

"A silly sullen look," said Jay. Presently she added: "But it must have
been disappointing to find yourself a poet in Victorian times. I always
think of you Olders and Wisers as coming out of your stuffy nineteenth
century into our nice new age with a sigh of relief."

"Oh no," said Mr. Russell. "You must remember that when we were born
into it, it became our nice new age, and therefore to us there is no
age like it."

"It seems incredible," said Jay. "Did Older and Wiser people ever live
violently, ever work--work hard--until their brains were blind and they
cried because they were so tired? Did they ever get drowned in seas full
of foaming ambitions? Did they ever fight without dignity but with joy
for a cause? Did they ever shout and jump with joy in their pyjamas in
the moonlight? Did they ever feel just drunk with being young, and in at
the start? And were Older and Wiser people's jokes ever funny?"

"We were fools often," said Mr. Russell. "Once, when I was fifteen, I bit
my hand--and here is the scar--because I thought I had found a new thing
in life, and I thought I was the first discoverer. But as to jokes, you
are on very dangerous ground there. One's sense of humour is a more
tender point than one's heart, especially an Older and Wiser sense of
humour. You know, we think the jokes of your nice new age not half so
funny as ours. But as neither you nor I make jokes, that obstacle need
not come between us."

"Oh, I think difference of date is never in itself an obstacle," said
Jay. "Time is not important enough to be an obstacle."

"You and I know that," said Mr. Russell.

A little unnoticed knot of Salvationists surprised Jay at a distance by
singing the tune of a sentimental song popular five years ago, and then
they surprised her again, as she passed them, and heard the words to
which the tune was being sung. Brimstone had usurped the place of the
roses in that song, and the love left in it was not apparently the kind
of love that Hackney understands.

"Why don't they sing the old hymn tunes?" asked Jay. "Or tunes like
'Abide with Me'--not very old or very good, but worn down with
devotion like the steps of an old church? Why do they take the drama
out of it all?"

Chloris at that moment introduced drama into the drive by jumping out of
the back seat of Christina. I must, I suppose, a