“I should say,” replied Joan Hardy, still smiling, “that you wanted somebody to look after you.” He stared at her for a moment in an almost abstracted fashion as if he had not fully understood; then he laughed quite suddenly and uncontrollably, like a man who has seen something very close to him that he knows he is a fool not to have seen before. So a man will fall over something in a game of hiding-and-seeking, and get up shaken with laughter. “What a bump your mother earth gives you when you fall out of an aeroplane,” he said, “especially when your flying ship is only a flying pig. The earth of the real peasants and the real pigs--don’t be offended; I assure you the confusion is a compliment. What a thing is horse-sense, and how much finer really than the poetry of Pegasus! And when there is everything else as well that makes the sky clean and the earth kind, beauty and bravery and the lifting of the head--well, you are right enough, Joan. Will you take care of me? Will you stop at home and clip my pig’s wings?” He had caught hold of her by the hands; but she still laughed as she answered: “Yes--I told you I couldn’t help--but you must really let go, Hilary. I can see your friends coming down from the quarry.” As she spoke, indeed, Colonel Crane and Owen Hood could be seen descending the slope and passing through a screen of slender trees towards them. “Hullo!” said Hilary Pierce cheerfully. “I want you to congratulate me. Joan thinks I’m an awful humbug, and right she is; I am what has been called a happy hypocrite. At least you fellows may think I’ve been guilty of a bit of a fake in this last affair, when I tell you the news. Well, I will confess.” “What news do you mean?” inquired the Colonel with curiosity. Hilary Pierce grinned and made a gesture over his shoulder to the litter of porcine parachutes, to indicate his last and crowning folly. “The truth is,” he said laughing, “that was only a final firework display to celebrate victory or failure, whichever you choose to call it. There isn’t any need to do any more, because the veto is removed.” “Removed?” exclaimed Hood. “Why on earth is that? It’s rather unnerving when lunatics suddenly go sane like that.” “It wasn’t anything to do with the lunatics,” answered Pierce quietly. “The real change was much higher up, or rather lower down. Anyhow, it was much farther at the back of things, where the Big Businesses are settled by the big people.” “What was the change?” asked the Colonel. “Old Oates has gone into another business,” answered Pierce quietly. “What on earth has old Oates to do with it?” asked Hood staring. “Do you mean that Yankee mooning about over mediæval ruins?”