ant
voice hummed the sonorous melody, rising to enthusiasm till the music of
massed bands followed it as a flag follows a flag-stick. The hymn was
one composed ten years before, and all England was familiar with it.
Old Mrs. Bland lifted the printed paper mechanically to her eyes, and
saw the words that she knew so well:

"_The Lord that dwells in earth and sea._" ...

She glanced down the verses, that from the Humanitarian point of view
had been composed with both skill and ardour. They had a religious ring;
the unintelligent Christian could sing them without a qualm; yet their
sense was plain enough--the old human creed that man was all. Even
Christ's, words themselves were quoted. The kingdom of God, it was said,
lay within the human heart, and the greatest of all graces was Charity.

She glanced at Mabel, and saw that the girl was singing with all her
might, with her eyes fixed on her husband's dark figure a hundred yards
away, and her soul pouring through them. So the mother, too, began to
move her lips in chorus with that vast volume of sound.

As the hymn died away, and before the cheering could begin again, old
Lord Pemberton was standing forward on the edge of the platform, and his
thin, metallic voice piped a sentence or two across the tinkling splash
of the fountains behind him. Then he stepped back, and Oliver came
forward.

* * * * *

It was too far for the two to hear what was said, but Mabel slipped a
paper, smiling tremulously, into the old lady's hand, and herself bent
forward to listen.

Old Mrs. Brand looked at that, too, knowing that it was an analysis of
her son's speech, and aware that she would not be able to hear his
words.

There was an exordium first, congratulating all who were present to do
honour to the great man who presided from his pedestal on the occasion
of this great anniversary. Then there came a retrospect, comparing the
old state of England with the present. Fifty years ago, the speaker
said, poverty was still a disgrace, now it was so no longer. It was in
the causes that led to poverty that the disgrace or the merit lay. Who
would not honour a man worn out in the service of his country, or
overcome at last by circumstances against which his efforts could not
prevail?... He enumerated the reforms passed fifty years before on this
very day, by which the nation once and for all declared the glory of
poverty and man's sympathy with the unfortunate.

So he had told them he w