sh people and how and why. And the first sentence said so.

"This England" (it said) "is _yours_. It belongs to _you_. Many enemies
have desired to take it because it is the most glorious and splendid
country in the world. But they have never taken it, because it is
_yours_ and has been kept for you. This book is to tell you how it has
come to be yours and how it has been kept for you,--not by kings or by
statesmen, or by great men alone, but by the English people. Down the
long years they have handed it on to you, as a torch is sent from hand
to hand, and you in your turn will hand it on down the long years before
you. They made the flame of England bright and ever brighter for you;
and you, stepping into all that they have made for you, will make it
bright and brighter yet. They passed and are gone; and you will pass and
go. But England will continue. Your England. _Yours._"

CHAPTER VII

I

Mabel called Sabre's school textbooks "those lesson books." After she
had thus referred to them two or three times he gave up trying to
interest her in them. The expression hurt him, but when he thought upon
it he reasoned with himself that he had no cause to be hurt. He thought,
"Dash it, that's what they are, lesson books. What on earth have I got
to grouse about?" But they meant to him a good deal more than what was
implied in the tone and the expression "those lesson books."

However, "England" was going to be something very different. No one
would call "England" a lesson book. Even Mabel would see that; and in
his enthusiasm he spoke of it to her a good deal, until the day when it
came up--of all unlikely connections in the world--in a discussion with
her on the National Insurance Act, then first outraging the country.

One day when English society was first shaken to its depths by the
disgusting indignity of what Mabel, in common with all nice people,
called "licking stamps for that Lloyd George", she mentioned to Sabre
that, "Well, thank goodness some of us know better than to steal the
money out of the poor creatures' wages."

She knew that this would please her husband because he was always doing
what she called "sticking up for the servants and all that class."

That it did not please him was precisely an example of his "absolutely
un-understandable" ways of looking at things that so desperately annoyed
her.

Sabre asked, "How do you mean--knowing better than to steal the money
out of their wages?"

"Wh