One of the frequent visitors, indeed, at The Ingle-Nook—that was the name of Peter’s birthplace—was Doctor Fremisson, the local general practitioner. He was a man, he said, who liked “Ideas.” The aborigines lacked Ideas, it seemed; but Stubland was a continual feast of them. The doctor’s diagnosis of the difference between these new English and the older English of the country rested entirely on the presence or absence of Ideas. But there he was wrong. The established people were people of fixed ideas; the immigrants had abandoned fixed ideas for discussion. So far from their having no ideas, those occasional callers who came dropping in so soon as the Stublands were settled in The Ingle-Nook before Peter was born, struck the Stublands as having ideas like monstrous and insurmountable cliffs. To fling your own ideas at them was like trying to lob stones into Zermatt from Macugnana. One day when Mrs. Darcy, old Lady Darcy’s daughter-in-law, had driven over, some devil prompted Arthur to shock her. He talked his extremest Fabianism. He would have the government control all railways, land, natural products; nobody should have a wage of less than two pounds a week; the whole country should be administered for the universal benefit; everybody should be educated. “I’m sure the dear old Queen does all she can,” said Mrs. Darcy. “I’m a democratic republican,” said Arthur. He might as well have called himself a Christadelphian for any idea he conveyed. Presently, seized by a gust of unreasonable irritation, he went out of the room. “Mr. Stubland talks,” said Mrs. Darcy; “_really_——” She paused. She hesitated. She spoke with a little disarming titter lest what she said should seem too dreadful. “He says such things. I really believe he’s more than half a Liberal. _There!_ You mustn’t mind what I say, Mrs. Stubland....” Dolly, by virtue of her vicarage training, understood these people better than Peter’s father. She had read herself out of the great Anglican culture, but she remembered things from the inside. She was still in close touch with numerous relations who were quite completely inside. Before the little green gate had clicked behind their departing backs, Arthur would protest to her and heaven that these visitors were impossible, that such visitors could not be, they were phantoms or bad practical jokes, undergraduates dressed up to pull his leg. “They know nothing,” he said. “They know all sorts of things you don’t know,” she corrected. “What _do_ they know? There isn’t a topic one can start on which they are not just blank.” “You start the wrong topics. They can tell you all sorts of things about the dear Queen’s grandchildren. They know things about horses. And about regiments and barracks. Tell me, Arthur, how is the charming young Prince of Bulgaria, who is just getting married, related to the late Prince Consort.” “Damn their Royal Marriages!”