Anybody who wasn't anybody might have supposed the noise to be a series of wrangles, but of course it wasn't so at all really. Issues far too weighty hung in the balance. It is all very well for people whose mental range is limited by _matinées_ and Brooklands and the newest car to talk in pleasant and unimpassioned voices, but what was going to happen to Art unless Cosimo hurled himself and the '_Life and Work_' against this heretic Van Gogh, and what was to become of England if Walter allowed a pig-headed man who could say nothing but "Blackpool Pier, Blackpool Pier," to shout him down, and what would happen to Civilization if Mr. Wilkinson did not, figuratively speaking, take hold of the dilettante Brimby and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat? No: there would be time enough for empty politenesses when the battle was won. In the meantime, a mere nobody might have thought they were merely excessively rude to one another. Then began fresh combinations and permutations of the talk. Mr. Wilkinson, whose square-cut pilot jacket somehow added to the truculence of his appearance, planted himself firmly for conversation before Dickie Lemesurier; the miner, whose head at a little distance appeared bald, but on a closer view was seen to be covered with football-cropped and plush-like bristles, nudged Cosimo's hip, to attract his attention: and Walter Wyron sprang forward with a welcoming "Hallo, Raffinger!" as the door opened and two young McGrath students were added to the crowd. For a minute no one voice preponderated in the racket; it was-- "Hallo, Raff! Thought you weren't coming!" "I want a gun!" (This from Corin.) "My dear Corin" (this from Bonniebell), "Miss Belchamber's told you over and over again guns are anti-social----" "Anybody smoking? Well, I know they don't mind----" "But, Miss Lemesurier, where a speaker reaches only a hundred or two, the written word----" "Ah, but the personal, magnetic thrill----" (This was in Dickie's rather deep voice.) Then Walter, to somebody else, not the miner-- "I should have thought _anybody_ would have known that when I said Saturnalia I meant----" "Where's Amory?" "Sweet, in those little tunics!----" "A subsidy from the State, of course----" Then the miner, but not to Walter-- "I' t' daylight, proddin' 'em up wi' a stick--to say nowt o' Port Skillian bathin'-place of a fine Sunda'----" "That hoary old lie, that Socialism means sharing----" "Oh, at any artists' colourman's----" "No; it will probably be published privately----" "Van Gogh----" "Oh, you're _entirely_ wrong!----" And then, in the middle of a sudden and mysterious lull, the man who had come without his safety-lamp was heard addressing Cosimo again:-- "Well, what about t' new paaper? Owt settled yet?... Nay, ye needn't look; Wilkinson telled me; it's all right; nowt 'at's said 'll go beyond these fower walls. Wilkinson's gotten a rare list together, names an' right, I can tell ye! But t' way I look at it is this----"