s together; and
the sooner you new nations realize it the better. What you need is an
annual invasion. Then you'd grow up."

"Thank you! Thank you!" said the Agent-General. "That's what I am always
trying to tell my people."

"But, my dear fool," Penfentenyou almost wept, "do you pretend that
these banana-fingered amateurs at home are grown up?"

"You poor, serious, pagan man," I retorted, "if you take 'em that way,
you'll wreck your Great Idea."

"Will you take him to Lord Lundie's to-morrow?" said the Agent-General
promptly.

"I suppose I must," I said, "if you won't."

"Not me! I'm going home," said the Agent-General, and departed. I am
glad that I am no colony's Agent-General.

Penfentenyou continued to argue about naval contributions till 1.15
A.M., though I was victor from the first.

At ten o'clock I got him and his correspondence into the motor, and
he had the decency to ask whether he had been unpolished over-night.
I replied that I waited an apology. This he made excuse for renewed
arguments, and used wayside shows as illustrations of the decadence of
England.

For example we burst a tyre within a mile of Credence Green, and, to
save time, walked into the beautifully kept little village. His eye was
caught by a building of pale-blue tin, stencilled "Calvinist Chapel,"
before whose shuttered windows an Italian organ-grinder with a
petticoated monkey was playing "Dolly Grey-"

"Yes. That's it!" snapped the egoist. "That's a parable of the general
situation in England. And look at those brutes!" A huge household
removals van was halted at a public-house. The men in charge were
drinking beer from blue and white mugs. It seemed to me a pretty sight,
but Penfentenyou said it represented Our National Attitude.

Lord Lundie's summer resting-place we learned was a farm, a little out
of the village, up a hill round which curled a high hedged road. Only
an initiated few spend their holidays at Credence Green, and they have
trained the householders to keep the place select. Penfentenyou made a
grievance of this as we walked up the lane, followed at a distance by
the organ-grinder.

"Suppose he is having a house-party," he said: "Anything's possible in
this insane land."

Just at that minute we found ourselves opposite an empty villa. Its roof
was of black slate, with bright unweathered ridge-tiling; its walls were
of blood-coloured brick, cornered and banded with vermiculated stucco
work, and there was c