It was from Mr. Arlington that the Professor heard the news. Mr. Arlington could not stop an instant, dinner being at twelve sharp and it wanting but ten minutes to; but seems to have yielded to temptation. The breakfast hour at the Manor Farm was now six a.m., had been so since Thursday; the whole family fully dressed and Mrs. Arlington presiding. If the Professor did not believe it he could come round any morning and see for himself. The Professor appears to have taken Mr. Arlington's word for it. By six-thirty everybody at their job and Mrs. Arlington at hers, consisting chiefly of seeing to it for the rest of the day that everybody was. Lights out at ten and everybody in bed; most of them only too glad to be there. "Quite right; keeps us all up to the mark," was Mr. Arlington's opinion (this was on Saturday). Just what was wanted. Not perhaps for a permanency; and, of course, there were drawbacks. The strenuous life--seeing to it that everybody else leads the strenuous life; it does not go with unmixed amiability. Particularly in the beginning. New-born zeal: must expect it to outrun discretion. Does not do to discourage it. Modifications to be suggested later. Taken all round, Mr. Arlington's view was that the thing must be regarded almost as the answer to a prayer. Mr. Arlington's eyes on their way to higher levels, appear to have been arrested by the church clock. It decided Mr. Arlington to resume his homeward way without further loss of time. At the bend of the lane the Professor, looking back, observed that Mr. Arlington had broken into a trot. This seems to have been the end of the Professor, regarded as a sane and intelligent member of modern society. He had not been sure at the time, but it was now revealed to him that when he had urged Malvina to test her strength, so to express it, on the unfortunate Mrs. Arlington, it was with the conviction that the result would restore him to his mental equilibrium. That Malvina with a wave of her wand--or whatever the hocus-pocus may have been--would be able to transform the hitherto incorrigibly indolent and easy-going Mrs. Arlington into a sort of feminine Lloyd George, had not really entered into his calculations.