a time at least the spreading circle of residual consequences about
the Experimental Farm must pass out of the focus of our narrative--how
for a long time a power of bigness, in fungus and toadstool, in grass
and weed, radiated from that charred but not absolutely obliterated
centre. Nor can we tell here at any length how these mournful spinsters,
the two surviving hens, made a wonder of and a show, spent their
remaining years in eggless celebrity. The reader who is hungry for
fuller details in these matters is referred to the newspapers of the
period--to the voluminous, indiscriminate files of the modern Recording
Angel. Our business lies with Mr. Bensington at the focus of the
disturbance.

He had come back to London to find himself a quite terribly famous man.
In a night the whole world had changed with respect to him. Everybody
understood. Cousin Jane, it seemed, knew all about it; the people in the
streets knew all about it; the newspapers all and more. To meet Cousin
Jane was terrible, of course, but when it was over not so terrible after
all. The good woman had limits even to her power over facts; it was
clear that she had communed with herself and accepted the Food as
something in the nature of things.

She took the line of huffy dutifulness. She disapproved highly, it was
evident, but she did not prohibit. The flight of Bensington, as she must
have considered it, may have shaken her, and her worst was to treat him
with bitter persistence for a cold he had not caught and fatigue he had
long since forgotten, and to buy him a new sort of hygienic all-wool
combination underwear that was apt to get involved and turned partially
inside out and partially not, and as difficult to get into for an
absent-minded man, as--Society. And so for a space, and as far as this
convenience left him leisure, he still continued to participate in the
development of this new element in human history, the Food of the Gods.

The public mind, following its own mysterious laws of selection, had
chosen him as the one and only responsible Inventor and Promoter of this
new wonder; it would hear nothing of Redwood, and without a protest it
allowed Cossar to follow his natural impulse into a terribly prolific
obscurity. Before he was aware of the drift of these things, Mr.
Bensington was, so to speak, stark and dissected upon the hoardings. His
baldness, his curious general pinkness, and his golden spectacles had
become a national possession.