"'Why,' Insley says, 'you don't know--you don't know how glad I am to hear you say this. It's exactly the thing my head has been full of....' "'Of course your head is full of it,' says Alex. 'How can it help but be when you're fast here some of the time? If you don't mind--what is it that keeps you here at all? I don't think I read Topping's letter properly....' "Insley looked out from all over his face. "'I stay,' he says, 'just because all this _is_ so. It needs somebody to stay, don't you think?' "'Ah, yes, I see,' says Alex, rapid and foreign. 'How do you mean, though? Surely you don't mean renouncing--and that sort of thing?' "'Renouncing--no!' says Insley. 'Getting into the game.' "He got his enthusiasm down into still places and outlined what he meant. It was all at the ends of his fingers--what there was to do if the town was to live up to itself, to find ways to express the everyday human fellowship that Insley see underneath everything. And Alex Proudfit listened, giving that nice, careful, pacifying attention of his. He was always so polite that his listening was like answering. When Insley got through, Alex's very disagreeing with him was sympathizing. "'My dear man,' says he--I remember every word because it was something I'd wondered sometimes too, only I'd done my wondering vague, like you do--'My dear man, but are you not, after all, anticipating? This is just the way Nature works--beating these things into the heads and hearts of generations. Aren't you trying to do it all at once?' "'I'm trying to help nature, to be a part of nature--exactly,' says Insley, 'and to do it here in Friendship Village.' "'Why,' says Alex, 'you'll be talking about facilitating God's plan next--helping him along, by Jove.' "Insley looks at him level. 'I mean that now,' he says, 'if you want to put it that way.' "'Good Lord,' says Alex, 'but how do you know what--what he wants?' "'Don't you?' says Insley, even. "Alex Proudfit turned and touched a bell. 'Look here,' he says, 'you stay and dine, won't you? I'm alone to-night--Calliope and I are. Stay. I always enjoy threshing this out.' "To the man-servant who just about breathed with a well-trained stoop of being deferential, his master give the order about the table. 'And, Bayless, have them hunt out some of those tea-roses they had in bloom the other day--you should see them, Calliope. Oh, and, Bayless, hurry dinner a bit. I'm as hungry as lions,' he added to us, and he made me think of the little boy in knickerbockers, asking me for fresh cookies.