“With my red hair, no doubt,” he replied, “but I don’t think I did set the Thames on fire. I think it was the Thames that set me on fire. Only you were always the spirit of the stream and the goddess of the valley.” “I hope I’m not quite so old as that,” answered Elizabeth. “Listen to this,” cried her husband, turning over the pages of the book. “‘According to the general belief, which prevailed until the recent success of the agrarian movement of the Long Bow, it was overwhelmingly improbable that a revolutionary change could be effected in England. The recent success of the agrarian protest----’” “Do come out of that book,” remonstrated his wife. “One of our visitors has just arrived.” The visitor proved to be the Reverend Wilding White, a man who had also played a prominent part in the recent triumph, a part that was sometimes highly public and almost pontifical; but in private life he had always a way of entering with his grey hair brushed or blown the wrong way and his eagle face eager or indignant; and his conversation like his correspondence came in a rush and was too explosive to be explanatory. “I say,” he cried, “I’ve come to talk to you about that idea, you know--Enoch Oates wrote about it from America and he’s a jolly good fellow and all that; but after all he does come from America and so he thinks it’s quite easy. But you can see for yourself it isn’t quite so easy, what with Turks and all that. It’s all very well to talk about the United States----” “Never you mind about the United States,” said Hood easily; “I think I’m rather in favour of the Heptarchy. You just listen to this; the epic of our own Heptarchy, the story of our own dear little domestic war. ‘The recent success of the agrarian protest----’” He was interrupted again by the arrival of two more guests; by the silent entrance of Colonel Crane and the very noisy entrance of Captain Pierce, who had brought his young wife with him from the country, for they had established themselves in the ancestral inn of the Blue Boar. White’s wife was still in the country, and Crane’s having long been busy in her studio with war-posters, was now equally busy with peace-posters.