"If you had only been following my argument, Agatha, you would see that probably she had no time for repugnance, being preoccupied in getting the poor fellow to do what he disliked. . . . Secondly--" "Oh! A sermon!" "Secondly," pursued the Vicar with firmness, "this War is so great a business that, to my mind, it just swallows up--effaces--all scruples and modesties and mock-modesties about precedence and the like. If any one sees a job that wants doing, and a way to put it through, he will simply have no time to be humble and let another man step before him. The jealousies and the broken pieces of Etiquette can be left to be picked up after the smoke has cleared away; and by that time, belike, they will have cleared away with the smoke. Do you remember that old story of Hans Andersen's, about the gale that altered the signboards? Well, I prophesy that a good many signboards will be altered by this blow, up and down England, perhaps even in our little parish. If it teach us at all to see things as they are, we shall all be known, the rest of our lives, for what we proved ourselves to be in 1914." "I saw in this morning's paper," said Mrs Steele, "that over at Troy they have an inn called the King of Prussia, and the Mayor and Corporation think of changing its name." "Yes," said her husband gravely; "the Kaiser wrote to the Town Clerk suggesting the Globe as more appropriate: but the Town Council, while willing to make some alteration, is divided between the Blue Boar and the Boot. . . . But that reminds me. If I am to attend your meeting, let us call in the Wesleyan Minister as a set-off. There's nothing makes a Woman's Meeting so womanly as a sprinkling of ministers of religion." "Robert, you are talking odiously, and you know it. I hate people to be satirical or sarcastic. To begin with, I never understand what they mean, so that I am helpless as well as uncomfortable." The Vicar had taken a step or two to the bay-window, where, with hands thrust within his trouser-pockets, he stood staring gloomily out on the bright flower-beds that, next to the comeliness and order of her ministering to the Church--garnishing of the altar, lustration of the holy vessels, washing and mending of vestments,--were the pride of Mrs Steele's life. "See how the flowers, as at parade, Under their colours stand display'd: Each regiment in order grows, That of the tulip, pink, and rose.-- O thou, that dear and happy Isle, The garden of the world erstwhile, Thou Paradise of the four seas Which Heaven planted us to please, But, to exclude the world, did guard With wat'ry, if not flaming, sword; Unhappy! shall we never more That sweet militia restore? When gardens only had their towers, And all the garrisons were flowers. . . ."