‘We are a vital nation,’ said Ollyett while we were discussing affairs at a Bat dinner.  ’Only an Englishman could have written that letter at this present juncture.’

’It reminded me of a tourist in the Cave of the Winds under Niagara.  Just one figure in a mackintosh.  But perhaps you saw our photo?’ I said proudly.

‘Yes,’ Bat replied.  ’I’ve been to Niagara, too.  And how’s Huckley taking it?’

‘They don’t quite understand, of course,’ said Ollyett.  ’But it’s bringing pots of money into the place.  Ever since the motor-bus excursions were started—­’

‘I didn’t know they had been,’ said Pallant.

’Oh yes.  Motor char-a-bancs—­uniformed guides and key-bugles included.  They’re getting a bit fed up with the tune there nowadays,’ Ollyett added.

‘They play it under his windows, don’t they?’ Bat asked.  ’He can’t stop the right of way across his park.’

‘He cannot,’ Ollyett answered.  ’By the way, Woodhouse, I’ve bought that font for you from the sexton.  I paid fifteen pounds for it.’

‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ asked Woodhouse.

’You give it to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  It is fourteenth-century work all right.  You can trust me.’

‘Is it worth it—­now?’ said Pallant.  ’Not that I’m weakening, but merely as a matter of tactics?’

‘But this is true,’ said Ollyett.  ’Besides, it is my hobby, I always wanted to be an architect.  I’ll attend to it myself.  It’s too serious for The Bun and miles too good for The Cake.’

He broke ground in a ponderous architectural weekly, which had never heard of Huckley.  There was no passion in his statement, but mere fact backed by a wide range of authorities.  He established beyond doubt that the old font at Huckley had been thrown out, on Sir Thomas’s instigation, twenty years ago, to make room for a new one of Bath stone adorned with Limoges enamels; and that it had lain ever since in a corner of the sexton’s shed.  He proved, with learned men to support him, that there was only one other font in all England to compare with it.  So Woodhouse bought it and presented it to a grateful South Kensington which said it would see the earth still flatter before it returned the treasure to purblind Huckley.  Bishops by the benchful and most of the Royal Academy, not to mention ‘Margaritas ante Porcos,’ wrote fervently to the papers. Punch based a political cartoon on it; the Times a third leader, ‘The Lust of Newness’; and the Spectator a scholarly and delightful middle, ‘Village Hausmania.’  The vast amused outside world said in all its tongues and types:  ’Of course!  This is just what Huckley would do!’ And neither Sir Thomas nor the Rector nor the sexton nor any one else wrote to deny it.

‘You see,’ said Ollyett, ’this is much more of a blow to Huckley than it looks—­because every word of it’s true.  Your Gubby dance was inspiration, I admit, but it hadn’t its roots in—­’