f peaceful penetration. An odd copy,
in _The Bun's_ rag-and-bone library, of Hone's _Every-Day Book_ had
revealed to me the existence of a village dance founded, like all
village dances, on Druidical mysteries connected with the Solar Solstice
(which is always unchallengeable) and Mid-summer Morning, which is dewy
and refreshing to the London eye. For this I take no credit--Hone being
a mine any one can work--but that I rechristened that dance, after I
had revised it, 'The Gubby' is my title to immortal fame. It was still
to be witnessed, I wrote, 'in all its poignant purity at Huckley, that
last home of significant mediaeval survivals'; and I fell so in love with
my creation that I kept it back for days, enamelling and burnishing.

'You's better put it in,' said Ollyett at last. 'It's time we asserted
ourselves again. The other fellows are beginning to poach. You saw that
thing in the _Pinnacle_ about Sir Thomas's Model Village? He must have
got one of their chaps down to do it.'

''Nothing like the wounds of a friend,' I said. 'That account of the
non-alcoholic pub alone was--'

'I liked the bit best about the white-tiled laundry and the Fallen
Virgins who wash Sir Thomas's dress shirts. Our side couldn't come
within a mile of that, you know. We haven't the proper flair for
sexual slobber.'

'That's what I'm always saying,' I retorted. 'Leave 'em alone. The other
fellows are doing our work for us now. Besides I want to touch up my
"Gubby Dance" a little more.'

'No. You'll spoil it. Let's shove it in to-day. For one thing it's
Literature. I don't go in for compliments as you know, but, etc. etc.'

I had a healthy suspicion of young Ollyett in every aspect, but though I
knew that I should have to pay for it, I fell to his flattery, and my
priceless article on the 'Gubby Dance' appeared. Next Saturday he asked
me to bring out _The Bun_ in his absence, which I naturally assumed
would be connected with the little maroon side-car. I was wrong.

On the following Monday I glanced at _The Cake_ at breakfast-time to
make sure, as usual, of her inferiority to my beloved but unremunerative
_Bun_. I opened on a heading: 'The Village that Voted the Earth was
Flat.' I read ... I read that the Geoplanarian Society--a society
devoted to the proposition that the earth is flat--had held its Annual
Banquet and Exercises at Huckley on Saturday, when after convincing
addresses, amid scenes of the greatest enthusiasm, Huckley villag