as Hugly,' wrote
M.L. Sigden from Oxf.

Though other papers scoffed, _The Bun_ was gravely sympathetic. Several
people wrote to deny that Huckley had been changed at birth. Only the
Rector--no philosopher as he pointed out, but a lover of accuracy--had
his doubts, which he laid publicly before Mr. M.L. Sigden who suggested,
through _The Bun_, that the little place might have begun life in
Anglo-Saxon days as 'Hogslea' or among the Normans as 'Argile,' on
account of its much clay. The Rector had his own ideas too (he said it
was mostly gravel), and M.L. Sigden had a fund of reminiscences. Oddly
enough--which is seldom the case with free reading-matter--our
subscribers rather relished the correspondence, and contemporaries
quoted freely.

'The secret of power,' said Ollyett, 'is not the big stick. It's the
liftable stick.' (This means the 'arresting' quotation of six or seven
lines.) 'Did you see the _Spec._ had a middle on "Rural Tenacities" last
week. That was all Huckley. I'm doing a "Mobiquity" on Huckley
next week.'

Our 'Mobiquities' were Friday evening accounts of easy
motor-bike-_cum_-side-car trips round London, illustrated (we could
never get that machine to work properly) by smudgy maps. Ollyett wrote
the stuff with a fervour and a delicacy which I always ascribed to the
side-car. His account of Epping Forest, for instance, was simply young
love with its soul at its lips. But his Huckley 'Mobiquity' would have
sickened a soap-boiler. It chemically combined loathsome familiarity,
leering suggestion, slimy piety and rancid 'social service' in one
fuming compost that fairly lifted me off my feet.

'Yes,' said he, after compliments. 'It's the most vital, arresting and
dynamic bit of tump I've done up to date. _Non nobis gloria!_ I met Sir
Thomas Ingell in his own park. He talked to me again. He inspired
most of it.'

'Which? The "glutinous native drawl," or "the neglected adenoids of the
village children"?' I demanded.

'Oh, no! That's only to bring in the panel doctor. It's the last flight
we--I'm proudest of.'

This dealt with 'the crepuscular penumbra spreading her dim limbs over
the boskage'; with 'jolly rabbits'; with a herd of 'gravid polled
Angus'; and with the 'arresting, gipsy-like face of their swart,
scholarly owner--as well known at the Royal Agricultural Shows as that
of our late King-Emperor.'

'"Swart" is good and so's "gravid,"' said I, 'but the panel doctor will
be annoyed about the ade