Mackaye was the earnest inquirer who got converted at the end of the meeting.  And there was quite a lot of girls I didn’t know, and—­oh, yes—­there was ’Dal!  ’Dal Benzaguen herself!  We sat together, going and coming.  She’s all the darling there ever was.  She sent you her love, and she told me to tell you that she won’t forget about Nellie Farren.  She says you’ve given her an ideal to work for.  She?  Oh, she was the Lady Secretary to the Geoplanarians, of course.  I forget who were in the other brakes—­provincial stars mostly—­but they played up gorgeously.  The art of the music-hall’s changed since your day.  They didn’t overdo it a bit.  You see, people who believe the earth is flat don’t dress quite like other people.  You may have noticed that I hinted at that in my account.  It’s a rather flat-fronted Ionic style—­neo-Victorian, except for the bustles, ’Dal told me,—­but ’Dal looked heavenly in it!  So did little Victorine.  And there was a girl in the blue brake—­she’s a provincial—­but she’s coming to town this winter and she’ll knock ’em—­Winnie Deans.  Remember that!  She told Huckley how she had suffered for the Cause as a governess in a rich family where they believed that the world is round, and how she threw up her job sooner than teach immoral geography.  That was at the overflow meeting outside the Baptist chapel.  She knocked ’em to sawdust!  We must look out for Winnie....  But Lafone!  Lafone was beyond everything.  Impact, personality—­conviction—­the whole bag o’ tricks!  He sweated conviction.  Gad, he convinced me while he was speaking! (Him?  He was President of the Geoplanarians, of course.  Haven’t you read my account?) It is an infernally plausible theory.  After all, no one has actually proved the earth is round, have they?’

‘Never mind the earth.  What about Huckley?’

’Oh, Huckley got tight.  That’s the worst of these model villages if you let ’em smell fire-water.  There’s one alcoholic pub in the place that Sir Thomas can’t get rid of.  Bat made it his base.  He sent down the banquet in two motor lorries—­dinner for five hundred and drinks for ten thousand.  Huckley voted all right.  Don’t you make any mistake about that.  No vote, no dinner.  A unanimous vote—­exactly as I’ve said.  At least, the Rector and the Doctor were the only dissentients.  We didn’t count them.  Oh yes, Sir Thomas was there.  He came and grinned at us through his park gates.  He’ll grin worse to-day.  There’s an aniline dye that you rub through a stencil-plate that eats about a foot into any stone and wears good to the last.  Bat had both the lodge-gates stencilled “The Earth is flat!” and all the barns and walls they could get at....  Oh Lord, but Huckley was drunk!  We had to fill ’em up to make ’em forgive us for not being aeroplanes.  Unthankful yokels!  D’you realise that Emperors couldn’t have commanded the talent Bat decanted on ’em?  Why, ’Dal alone was....  And by eight o’clock not even a bit of paper left!  The whole show packed up and gone, and Huckley hoo-raying for the earth being flat.’