It is not, therefore, impossible to understand how it came about that there were not a few people, youngish people, who considered Mr. Townshend to be a tiresome man. They said: “He is very nice, but _frankly_, isn’t he rather tiresome?” I supposed he was rather tiresome. Hilary was a man of various ages; when nothing was going well with him, he would look no more than forty; when everything was going well with him, he would look about forty-five; when he was crossing a road, that is to say when he was thinking, he looked about fifty. This last was, I believe, his age. Hilary was a man who had convinced himself and every one else that he had neither use nor time for the flibberty-gibberties of life. He collected postage-stamps and had sat as Liberal Member for an Essex constituency for fifteen years. To be a Liberal was against every one of his prejudices, but to be a Conservative was against all his convictions. He thought of democracy as a drain-pipe through which the world must crawl for its health. He did not think the health of the world would ever be good. When travelling he looked porters sternly in the face and over-tipped them. His eyes were grey and gentle, and they were suspicious of being amused. I think that Hilary treasured a belief that his eyes were cold and ironic, as also that his face was of a stern cast. His face was long, and the features somehow muddled. It was a kind face. Hilary is the last in direct line of the Townshends, who have held Magralt, a Tudor manor on the Essex coast, since a Townshend deserted to Henry Tudor on Bosworth Field. The Townshends of Magralt have always been soldiers, “and that,” Guy, first and last, a soldier, will say, “is the only reason one can see why Hilary is a politician by profession and the foremost stamp-collector in Chesterfield Street by the sweat of his brow.” But one has to report that Hilary was once, before witnesses, perfectly beastly to an American gentleman who said that Blucher had arrived in time for the Battle of Waterloo. But it was on the question of marriage that the two friends would indulge the sharpest difference of opinion; or rather, Hilary’s wasn’t an opinion, it was a lurking Silence. “Suppose you die,” said Guy de Travest. “You might. You are ten years older than me in years alone. You may receive your call to higher things at any moment. Look how I beat you at squash the other day! Let us suppose, then, that you are as good as dead. Unmarried, childless. You have done nothing. You are nothing. You leave nothing. Except, of course, what was left to you----” “Less,” said Hilary. “Your memory, then, goes down as that of a sickening philatelist. Whereas, had any one of your ancestors had a chance of a bit of war like ours, he would have died a Major-General!”