remark. "Yes, rather. Well, this
Insurance Act business--that's really a jolly good example of the way to
do things. You see, it's not giving them the right to free treatment
when they're ill; it's giving them the chance to earn the right. That's
what you want to explain to High and Low. See--you want to say to them,
'This is your show. Your very own. Fine. You're building this up, I'm
helping. You're helping all sorts of poor devils and you're helping
yourself at the same time. You're stacking up a great chunk of the State
and it belongs to you. England's yours and you want to pile it up all
you know'--"

He was quite flushed.

"That's the sort of thing I'm putting into that book of mine. 'England's
yours', you know. Precious beyond price; and therefore grand to be
making more precious and more your own. I wish you'd like to see how the
book's getting on; would you?"

"What book?"

"Why 'England.' I told you, you know. That history."

"Oh, that lesson book! I wish you'd write a novel."

He looked at her. "Oh, well!" he said.

II

After that he never mentioned "England" again to her. But he most
desperately wanted to talk about it to some one. There was no one in
Penny Green from whom he could expect helpful suggestions; but it was
not helpful suggestions he wanted. He wanted merely to talk about it to
a sympathetic listener. And not only about the book,--about all sorts of
things that interested him. And indirectly they all helped the book. To
talk with one who responded sympathetically was in some curious way a
source of enormous inspiration to him. Not always precisely
inspiration,--comfort. All sorts of warming feelings stirred pleasurably
within him when he could, in some sympathetic company, open out his
mind.

He was not actively aware of it, but what, in those years, he came to
crave for as a starved child craves for food was sympathy of mind.

He found it, in Penny Green, with what Mabel called "the most
extraordinary people." "What you can find in that Mr. Fargus and that
young Perch and his everlasting mother," she used to say, "I simply
cannot imagine."

He found a great deal.

III

Mr. Fargus, who lived next door down the Green, and outside whose gate
the bicycle had made its celebrated shortage record, was a grey little
man with grey whiskers and always in a grey suit. He had a large and
very red wife and six thin and rather yellowish daughters. Once a day,
at four in summer and at