‘Two hemispheres and four continents so far,’ I pointed out.

’Its roots in the hearts of Huckley was what I was going to say.  Why don’t you ever come down and look at the place?  You’ve never seen it since we were stopped there.’

‘I’ve only my week-ends free,’ I said, ’and you seem to spend yours there pretty regularly—­with the side-car.  I was afraid—­’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ he said cheerily.  ’We’re quite an old engaged couple now.  As a matter of fact, it happened after “the gravid polled Angus” business.  Come along this Saturday.  Woodhouse says he’ll run us down after lunch.  He wants to see Huckley too.’

Pallant could not accompany us, but Bat took his place.

‘It’s odd,’ said Bat, ’that none of us except Ollyett has ever set eyes on Huckley since that time.  That’s what I always tell My people.  Local colour is all right after you’ve got your idea.  Before that, it’s a mere nuisance.’  He regaled us on the way down with panoramic views of the success—­geographical and financial—­of ‘The Gubby’ and The Song.

‘By the way,’ said he, ’I’ve assigned ’Dal all the gramophone rights of “The Earth.”  She’s a born artist.  ’Hadn’t sense enough to hit me for triple-dubs the morning after.  She’d have taken it out in coos.’

‘Bless her!  And what’ll she make out of the gramophone rights?’ I asked.

‘Lord knows!’ he replied.  ’I’ve made fifty-four thousand my little end of the business, and it’s only just beginning.  Hear that!’

A shell-pink motor-brake roared up behind us to the music on a key-bugle of ‘The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat.’  In a few minutes we overtook another, in natural wood, whose occupants were singing it through their noses.

‘I don’t know that agency.  It must be Cook’s,’ said Ollyett.  ’They do suffer.’  We were never out of earshot of the tune the rest of the way to Huckley.

Though I knew it would be so, I was disappointed with the actual aspect of the spot we had—­it is not too much to say—­created in the face of the nations.  The alcoholic pub; the village green; the Baptist chapel; the church; the sexton’s shed; the Rectory whence the so-wonderful letters had come; Sir Thomas’s park gate-pillars still violently declaring ‘The Earth is flat,’ were as mean, as average, as ordinary as the photograph of a room where a murder has been committed.  Ollyett, who, of course, knew the place specially well, made the most of it to us.  Bat, who had employed it as a back-cloth to one of his own dramas, dismissed it as a thing used and emptied, but Woodhouse expressed my feelings when he said:  ‘Is that all—­after all we’ve done?’

‘I know,’ said Ollyett soothingly. ’"Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing:  When Ilion like a mist rose into towers.”  I’ve felt the same sometimes, though it has been Paradise for me.  But they do suffer.’