Miss Morgen--I, who weigh nineteen stone! It will be a thing to see.
Come with us."

Norgate excused himself and left the place a moment later. It was a fine
night, and he walked slowly towards Pall Mall, deep in thought. Outside
one of the big clubs on the right-hand side, a man descended from a
taxicab just as Norgate was passing. They almost ran into one another.

"Norgate, you reprobate!"

"Hebblethwaite!"

The latter passed his arm through the young man's and led him towards the
club steps.

"Come in and have a drink," he invited. "I am just up from the House. I
do wish you could get some of your military friends to stop worrying us,
Norgate. Two hours to-night have been absolutely wasted because they
would talk National Service and heckle us about the territorials."

"I'll have the drink, although heaven knows I don't need any!" Norgate
replied. "As for the rest, I am all on the side of the hecklers. You
ought to know that."

They drew two easy-chairs together in a corner of the great, deserted
smoking-room, and Hebblethwaite ordered the whiskies and sodas.

"Yes," he remarked, "I forgot. You are on the other side, aren't you? I
haven't a word to say against the navy. We spend more money than is
necessary upon it, and I stick out for economy whenever I can. But as
regards the army, my theory is that it is useless. It's only a
temptation to us to meddle in things that don't concern us. The navy is
sufficient to defend these shores, if any one were foolish enough to wish
to attack us. If we need an army at all, we should need one ten times the
size, but we don't. Nature has seen to that. Yet tonight, when I was
particularly anxious to get on with some important domestic legislation,
we had to sit and listen to hours of prosy military talk, the
possibilities of this and that. They don't realise, these brain-fogged
ex-military men, that we are living in days of common sense. Before many
years have passed, war will belong to the days of romance."

"For a practical politician, Hebblethwaite," Norgate pronounced, "you
have some of the rottenest ideas I ever knew. You know perfectly well
that if Germany attacked France, we are almost committed to chip in. We
couldn't sit still, could we, and see Calais and Boulogne, Dieppe and
Ostend, fortified against us?"

"If Germany should attack France!" Hebblethwaite repeated. "If Prussia
should send an expeditionary force to Cornwall, or the Siamese should
declare thems