Such is the future of our
Land.' And he watched them. How methodically they went to work! How
patient and well-done-for they looked! After all, was it not the ideal
future? Gardeners, gooseberries, and the great! Each of the three
content in that station of life into which--! What more could a country
want? Gardeners, gooseberries, and the great! The phrase had a certain
hypnotic value. Why trouble? Why fuss? Gardeners, gooseberries, and
the great! A perfect land! A land dedicate to the week-end! Gardeners,
goose--! And suddenly he saw that he was not alone. Half hidden by the
angle of the wall, on a stone of the foundations, carefully preserved
and nearly embedded in the nettles which Clara had allowed to grow
because they added age to the appearance, was sitting a Bigwig. One of
the Settleham faction, he had impressed Felix alike by his reticence,
the steady sincerity of his gray eyes, a countenance that, beneath a
simple and delicate urbanity, had still in it something of the best type
of schoolboy. 'How comes he to have stayed?' he mused. 'I thought
they always fed and scattered!' And having received an answer to his
salutation, he moved across and said:

"I imagined you'd gone."

"I've been having a look round. It's very jolly here. My affections are
in the North, but I suppose this is pretty well the heart of England."

"Near 'the big song,'" Felix answered. "There'll never be anything
more English than Shakespeare, when all's said and done." And he took a
steady, sidelong squint at his companion. 'This is another of the
types I've been looking for,' he reflected. The peculiar
'don't-quite-touch-me' accent of the aristocrat--and of those who would
be--had almost left this particular one, as though he secretly aspired
to rise superior and only employed it in the nervousness of his first
greetings. 'Yes,' thought Felix, 'he's just about the very best we can
do among those who sit upon 'the Land.' I would wager there's not a
better landlord nor a better fellow in all his class, than this
one. He's chalks away superior to Malloring, if I know anything of
faces--would never have turned poor Tryst out. If this exception were
the rule! And yet--! Does he, can he, go quite far enough to meet the
case? If not--what hope of regeneration from above? Would he give up his
shooting? Could he give up feeling he's a leader? Would he give up
his town house and collecting whatever it is he collects? Could he
let himself sink dow