The retort was greeted with a howl of _Tip_! There was a movement at the back of the hall; and suddenly an old man was lifted on the shoulders of the Trade Unionists there. Yellow, fang-less, creased, he looked, poised on high above the crowd against the white background of wall, something between a mummy and a monkey. As always he wore no tie; but he had donned a collar for the occasion, and this had sprung open and made two dingy ass-like ears on either side of his head. "Did he sack you, Tip?" called Joe. "Yes, he did," came the quivering old voice. "Turned us off at a day. Told us to go to the Bastille; and said he'd put the police on us." The tremulous old voice made people turn their heads. They saw the strange figure lifted above them. Some tittered. The ripple of titters enraged the men at the back of the hall. "See what you've made of him!" thundered Joe. "And then jeer! ... Shame!" "Shame!" screamed a bitter man. "Do the Fats know shame?" "Some of em do," said a quiet voice. It was true too. Mrs. Trupp was looking pale and miserable in the front-row, so was the Colonel on the platform, Bobby Chislehurst and others. The titterers, indeed, howled into silence by the storm of indignation their action had aroused, wore themselves the accusing air of those who hope thereby to fix the blame for their mistake on others. In the silence a baggy old gentleman rose in the body of the hall, slewed round with difficulty, and mooned above his spectacles at the strange idol seated on men's shoulders behind him. "_And He was lifted up_," he said in a musing voice more to himself than to anybody else. The phrase, audible to many, seemed to spread a silence about it as a stone dropped in a calm pond creates an ever-broadening ripple. In the silence old Tip slid gently to the ground and was lost once more amid the crowd of those who had raised him for a brief moment into fleeting eminence. The meeting broke up. Outside the hall stood Mr. Trupp's car, Alf at the wheel: for the old surgeon's regular chauffeur had been called up. Mrs. Trupp, coming down the steps, went up to Ruth who was standing on the pavement. "So glad you spoke up, Ruth," she said, and pressed her hand. "Come on!" said Mr. Trupp. "We'll give you a lift home, Ruth." Alf was looking green. The two women got in, and the old surgeon followed them. He was grinning, Mrs. Trupp quietly malicious, and Ruth amused. The people on the pavement and streaming out of the hall saw and were caught by the humour of the situation, as their eyes and comments showed. Then Colonel Lewknor made his way to the car. "Just a word, Mrs. Caspar!" he said. "Things are squaring up. Mrs. Lewknor's taking the women and children in hand. Could you come and see her one morning at Under-cliff?" The hostel that Mrs. Lewknor had built upon the cliff boomed from the start. It was full to over-flowing, winter and summer; and Eton was in sight for Toby when war was declared.