rile and
spontaneous. As I say, you're a clever fellow. Can't you see my point?
Speech is an index of mental attitude. I bet you what you like Phyllis
Gedge would see it at once. Just imagine a subaltern at the front after
a bad quarter of an hour with his Colonel--'I've merited your
strictures, sir!' If there was a bomb handy, the Colonel would catch it
up and slay him on the spot."

"But I don't happen to be at the front, Major," said Randall.

"Then you damned well ought to be," said I, in sudden wrath.

I couldn't help it. He asked for it. He got it.

He went away, mounted his motor bicycle, and rode off.

I was sorry. The boy evidently was in a chastened mood. If I had
handled him gently and diplomatically, I might have done something with
him. I suppose I'm an irritable, nasty-tempered beast. It is easy to
lay the blame on my helpless legs. It isn't my legs. I've conquered my
damned legs. It isn't my legs. Its ME.

I was ashamed of myself. And when, later, Marigold enquired whether the
doors were still shut against Mr. Holmes, I asked him what the blazes
he meant by not minding his own business. And Marigold said: "Very
good, sir."

CHAPTER IX

For a week or two the sluggish stream of Wellingsfordian life flowed on
undisturbed. The chief incident was a recruiting meeting held on the
Common. Sir Anthony Fenimore in his civic capacity, a staff-officer
with red tabs, a wounded soldier, an elderly, eloquent gentleman from
recruiting headquarters in London, and one or two nondescripts,
including myself, were on the platform. A company of a County
Territorial Battalion and the O.T.C. of the Godbury Grammar School gave
a semblance of military display. The Town Band, in a sort of Hungarian
uniform, discoursed martial music. Old men and maidens, mothers and
children, and contented young fellows in khaki belonging to all kinds
of arms, formed a most respectable crowd. The flower of Wellingsfordian
youth was noticeably absent. They were having too excellent a time to
be drawn into the temptation of a recruiting meeting, in spite of the
band and the fine afternoon and the promiscuity of attractive damsels.
They were making unheard-of money at the circumjacent factories; their
mothers were waxing fat on billeting-money. They never had so much
money to spend on moving-picture-palaces and cheap jewellery for their
inamoratas in their lives. As our beautiful Educational system had most
scrupulously excluded from