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“Nonsense, Zookey!” cried Nell, “aren't you ashamed to tell such fibs? But you had better go and get ready, Mr. Dekker. Tell them Zookey and I will bring Henry down in less than five minutes. . . .”

“And so she said her must go; and Doxy said Mister would be best pleased for she to go, her wone self.” These exciting words echoed through the kitchen of Whitelake Cottage half an hour later, when the christening was well over and the upper-class portion of its audience was having their tea in the parlour.

“She shouldn't a-spoke up like that,” said Nancy Stickles reproachfully, putting down a great piece of new bread and blackcurrant jam, for they were all squarely seated round the kitchen table, and looking with a straight open gaze into the equivocal face of Zookey—“After all it weren't nice for Mr. Zoyland to be talking to she on sofa in parlour, like you says he were, and she in bed with Master Henry, and house all hushed and still.”

“Will you have another piece of sponge cake, Auntie Legge?” threw in the hospitable Zookey. “Us all do know how 'spectable and proper you be, Nance Stickles, when all the town know of how Red Robinson was turned out of house by your Harry because of the fuss you made of 'ee and the clipping and colling that went on when your Harry was to bed. I do know for sure how 'twere, because Mr. Robinson told me of it, his wone self.”

It was at this point that Abel Twig broke in, interrupting this altercation among the women with such a quavering faint voice that it seemed like the voice of Philosophy itself come forth from those old Lake Village mounds.

“Thik Red Robinson were zour, no doubt, when Mistress Nance didn't let 'un do what 'a wanted to do . . . and so 'a went and cast up this tale agin' her, same as thik dirty Potiphar-scrub did agin' King Joseph in History.”

There was an uncomfortable silence round the kitchen table, during which the more peacefully inclined among the guests turned to Mother Legge for protection. That great provider of Cyprian pleasures had so far hardly uttered a word. She had kept her eyes fixed upon the door which led into the parlour; a door which had been carried bodily to the cottage from Mark Court and was of excessively thick oak.

“Don't let them get quarrellin', Auntie,” pleaded Tittie Peth-erton with her mouth full of buttered scone.

Sally Jones added her voice to that of Tittie, from whose appearance no one certainly would ever have supposed that a few months ago she was screaming so pitiably for morphia.

“Mrs. Legge!” cried Sally, as if the old procuress were very deaf. “Didn't 'ee hear, Mrs. Legge, what Zookey Pippard said to Nance Stickles?”

The mother of Eudoxia was not slow in defending herself.

“Auntie be hard of hearing,” she threw in spitefully, “when her eats her tea with poor volk in kitchen, 'stead of with gentry in parlour.”

These words hit Mother Legge straight to the heart. For the truth was that the old lady Iiad half-thought when she received the invitation to attend the Zoyland christening, that her place would have been with the gentry rather than with her humble relatives. It was indeed in pensive consideration of this unhappy nuance that the portly lady, though they had given her the only chair that had arms and the only tea-cup that wasn't a kitchen-cup and had taken care to help her first to every dainty on the table, now stared gravely at this great oaken door through which the one voice of the people within that was at all articulate— and that only now and again—was the voice of William Zoyland. The other voices were lost in a vague indistinguishable murmur.

Zookey Pippard was among the few women in Glastonbury who ever stood up to the present tenant of Camelot and of “my other house.” But there was a majestic dignity in the rebuke that the old lady administered now and an incredible daring too. She actually got up from her chair, walked to the oaken door, opened it wide enough for her person to fill the whole space and said with perfect sangfroid to Nell: “Your servant here, Ma'am, is unwilling to leave us to look after ourselves; but you must, please, tell us the moment you need her; for we can get on perfectly well without her.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Legge; thank you very much!” cried Nell, half-rising from her chair in that particular flurry of perturbation that young hostesses feel when there are signs of a mutiny below deck. It was the Marquis who saved the situation.

“Why, if that isn't my old friend from Paradise! They never told me they'd got you here! Where have they been hiding you? Come over here—is that all right, Nell?—and sit by me.” He gave the arm-chair in which Persephone was seated a little jerk with his finger and thumb—he behaved exactly as if he had been Theodoric the Ostrogoth, patronising some harem at Algiers and indicating by the slightest tap upon his Gothic sword-hilt that he would be more amused by the aged story-teller of the tents than by the cleverest young houri.

Persephone as she languidly rose, smiling very sweetly upon Mrs. Legge and extending one of her long arms toward her, gave Lord P. one single quick, flashing, steel-piercing glance that not only succeeded in making the old despot feel uncomfortable, but in making him heartily wish her back; so lovely did she look in her anger.

“She could have stabbed me, the little minx,” he thought. “And I must see her again,” he thought.

Once settled in this capacious chair, with all her black satin flounces and her voluminous black laces deposited about her, Mother Legge gazed round her with impenetrable aplomb. Under the protection of my Lord she felt ready to be indulgent to her enemies and more than bountiful to her friends. She even felt she owed something to Zookey Pippard for having been the one to give her the final prod that had led to this public recognition of her true status in Glastonbury society.

“He be fast asleep, the pretty babe,” she remarked now, glancing upwards at the ceiling. “You splashed 'un well with the holy water, Passon! It put me in mind of me wone Baptism to see how they drops did trickle over 'un.”

There arose at this moment a pressing necessity for more hot water in Nell's best silver tea-pot, which had been a present from her communist brother. To that brother the young mother looked now, for she noticed that Persephone, in her reaction from the rebuff she had received from my Lord, was flirting outrageously with Will.

Dave got up with alacrity, opened the thick oak door and entered the kitchen, allowing a clatter of excited women's voices, mingled with the husky bass tones of Number One, to pour into the parlour.

He returned with the kettle and filled up the tea-pot, which his sister carefully held out to him across the sun-burnt wrists and clean Sunday shirt-cuffs of the Vicar. The door between the two rooms remained open while this transaction went on; and that curious tension that comes over two confronted groups of people, between whom yawns the social gulf, reduced Whitelake Cottage to one complete self-conscious silence. It was through the middle of this silence that Dave, like a young doctor walking down a ward of expectant patients, took the kettle back to the kitchen and returned to his place, closing the oak door behind him.

“I can't think how we people,” he said, “can be content to go on with this sort of thing. I suppose there isn't one of us here who casts a thought on all those picks and shovels that are working now, over at Wookey, getting out that tin which Nature put into the Mendips for the benefit of everybody.”

Will Zoyland rolled his amorous blue eyes lazily round from his contemplation of Percy's supple figure and stared at the speaker, who now took his seat by Lady Rachel.

A splutter of bullying raillery burst from him before his brain had the wit to think of a good retort.

“What is your name? Elacampaine! If you ask me again I'll tell you the same,” he chanted in an aggravating manner; and then he added:

“You and I and the Vicar, Dave, my friend, are the only ones here who could use those shovels for five minutes; and ive couldn't use them—at least / couldn't—for half an hour without getting exhausted. What are you going to do about that, eh? There must be division of labour in this world.”

“But were not labouring at all!” cried Lady Rachel, making room for Dave to take his seat by her side.

“Not labouring, Rachel? That's a nice thing to say,” cried Zoy-land in a great voice, “when I've given up my one single holiday for months to entertain all you people and have Henry christened! You should see how I work out there, my good child. Why, I'm often in that draughty little office, hours after Spear's precious shovellers have gone home to their suppers.”

He shouted all this so loudly that Dave's answer was made the more effective by its extreme quietness.

“We all can't dig, Will. That's true enough; but we'd all dodge it if we could. I'd be content if those who did the dirty work got more pay than the rest of us—instead of much less; and being looked down upon by us as well.”

Zoyland must have been conscious of the advantage that Spear's quietness gave him. He must have been nourishing a bitter grievance too about Eudoxia and a still deeper one over what his father had just told him with regard to the sale; for he now cried out quite uncivilly:

“Bosh! Rats! All these theories are the merest clap-trap! It's the same all over the world! Wherever you go you see men ordering and men obeying. Would you yourself be found with a pick and shovel, I'd like to know, if you could drill us all into your precious commune tomorrow?”

A humorous smile flickered across Dave's face at the mention of the word commune. “They little guess,” he thought to himself, “how near they are to a commune in Glastonbury!”

But before he could reply, Lady Rachel had leaped into the breach.

“The point you entirely slur over, Will,” cried the young girl, quoting with a touching faithfulness to her lover, a paragraph in next Saturday's Wayfarer “is whether these labourers would prefer working for a single individual like Philip Crow, or working for themselves—that's to say for the community,”

“Well said, Lady Rachel!” murmured Mr. Spear.

There were actually tears in his eyes as he looked at her, so delighted was he to find how far she had travelled along the path, since he had last talked with her.

“Well said, little traitor!” mimicked Zoyland.

“If you'd think a little more and shout a little less, Will, it would be a good thing,” retorted his half-sister with a red flush on her cheeks.

“What she said is unanswerable,” remarked Dave Spear sternly.

The Marquis of P. rose to his feet------

“Will,” he said in a slow drawling voice, “I wish you'd be so good as to tell the Sergeant to put my horse in and bring him round.” He then turned politely to Nell, fumbling for a minute in the pockets of his coat, and finally producing an object tied up in tissue paper.

“I picked up Rachel at the curiosity shop in Glastonbury,” he said, “and she helped me to choose this little trifle for the child. That man , . . that extraordinary individual . . . who's always there now ? . . took a long time hunting it up . . . but it's genuine . . . he said it was rather valuable . . . it's got our arms on it anyway . , . which I thought was a rather happy coincidence.”

However long Mr. Evans may have taken in finding the object referred to, he certainly hadn't taken very long in tying it up; for, as Lord P. brought it out of his pocket, the tissue paper was already in tatters. It was a tiny little cup, but it was apparently made of gold; and there was a general rush of the company to look at it.

Nell made a very pretty, hesitating, upward tilt of her face; and the bastard's father didn't hesitate to take advantage of this. He held her upraised chin gently between his finger and thumb for a second as he brushed her full lips with his grey mustache.

“Bless you, my dear,” whispered the old man softly. “After all it's you mothers who are the real workers.”

The fuss over the golden cup, which Nell presently, to prevent the portly lady having to struggle to her feet, placed in Mother Legge's lap, occupied the company sufficiently and laid—like the council's water-cart—the cloud of controversial dust, until Sergeant Blimp appeared at the back door with the green-wheeled dog-cart.

The Marquis and his daughter had to pass through the kitchen to reach the vehicle, and Zookey Pippard wisely placed a block of wood against the oak door to keep it open.

The Sergeant and his big horse were soon surrounded by a mingled company from both the two rooms; for a horse is still the one thing in England that obliterates all social embarrassment.

“How be, Sergeant?” said Abel Twig familiarly to the solemn-faced coachman.

“Pretty tidy, Mr. Twig, thank'ee—I'd like it well enough down here and be glad enough—I would—to stay down here, if 'tweren't for they Bellamys. Those two old warlocks, Mr. Twig, were made by Satan, to bother a man's life out of him.”

“I can believe it, Sergeant, I can believe it. I only once set eyes on thik wold couple; and that were at Somerton girt Fair; but I seed 5un haggling wi' they gippoos in a manner onbefitting decent Christian volk. I were sorry for they gippoos • . . and that's the truth, Sergeant . . . when I heerd how thik pair were carryin' on.”

Sally Jones now hurried forward to stroke the mane of the black horse.

“How does yer uncle Bart enjoy 'is-sell, Sal, now he be back in shop?”

“He ain't doing only half what he were, Mr. Twig,” replied Sal, “and 'ee have gived up his place over shop too. He have taken a room at Dickery Cantle's where he can see the cattle market from his windy. He says, 'Them as has had a zysty as bad as my zysty do like to see a bit of the girt world, afore they caves in.'”

When the Marquis and his daughter appeared upon the scene, and were helped into the dog-cart there was quite a little crowd around them.

Though most of these friendly adherents were only women, Lord P. received an old-fashioned feudal ovation as he drove off by Blimp's side with Lady Rachel perched upon the back seat.

“ Tis fine to smell a whiff of good horse's dung again,” said Abel Twig to Zookey, as they turned back into the house, “in place of this here gasoline.”

“That's what my darter Doxy said, only this very marnin', as her went off to get the Frome bus. 'Mother,' my darter said, 'I reckon I'll go back where people aren't so finicky and so per-tickler, and where they girt cart-horses have silver bells on their necks.'”