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Book, page 151 / 221 "You poor, serious, pagan man," I retorted, "if you take 'em that way, you'll wreck your Great Idea." "Will you take him to Lord Lundie's to-morrow?" said the Agent-General promptly. "I suppose I must," I said, "if you won't." "Not me! I'm going home," said the Agent-General, and departed. I am glad that I am no colony's Agent-General. Penfentenyou continued to argue about naval contributions till 1.15 A.M., though I was victor from the first. At ten o'clock I got him and his correspondence into the motor, and he had the decency to ask whether he had been unpolished over-night. I replied that I waited an apology. This he made excuse for renewed arguments, and used wayside shows as illustrations of the decadence of England. For example we burst a tyre within a mile of Credence Green, and, to save time, walked into the beautifully kept little village. His eye was caught by a building of pale-blue tin, stencilled "Calvinist Chapel," before whose shuttered windows an Italian organ-grinder .with a petticoated monkey was playing "Dolly Grey-" "Yes. That's it!" snapped the egoist. "That's a parable of the general situation in England. And look at those brutes!" A huge household removals van was halted at a public-house. The men in charge were drinking beer from blue and white mugs. It seemed to me a pretty sight, but Penfentenyou said it represented Our National Attitude. Lord Lundie's summer resting-place we learned was a farm, a little out of the village, up a hill round which curled a high hedged road. Only an initiated few spend their holidays at Credence Green, and they have trained the householders to keep the place select. Penfentenyou made a grievance of this as we
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