“It looks more like beginning than it has ever done,” said Mr. Britling.  “It’s a foolish business.”

“I suppose if they start in on us we got to hit back at them,” said Mr. Hickson.  “Postman—­he’s got his papers too....”

Mr. Britling made his way through the drifting throng towards the little wicket that led into the Gardens....

He was swung round suddenly by a loud bang.

It was the gun proclaiming the start of the balloon race.

He stood for some moments watching the scene.  The balloon start had gathered a little crowd of people, village girls in white gloves and cheerful hats, young men in bright ties and ready-made Sunday suits, fathers and mothers, boy scouts, children, clerks in straw hats, bicyclists and miscellaneous folk.  Over their heads rose Mr. Cheshunt, the factotum of the estate.  He was standing on a table and handing the little balloons up into the air one by one.  They floated up from his hand like many-coloured grapes, some rising and falling, some soaring steadily upward, some spinning and eddying, drifting eastward before the gentle breeze, a string of bubbles against the sky and the big trees that bounded the park.  Farther away to the right were the striped canvas tents of the flower-show, still farther off the roundabouts churned out their music, the shooting galleries popped, and the swing boats creaked through the air.  Cut off from these things by a line of fencing lay the open park in which the deer grouped themselves under the great trees and regarded the festival mistrustfully.  Teddy and Hugh appeared breaking away from the balloon race cluster, and hurrying back to their dart-throwing.  A man outside a little tent that stood apart was putting up a brave-looking notice, “Unstinted Teas One Shilling.”  The Teddy perambulator was moored against the cocoanut shy, and Aunt Wilshire was still displaying her terrible prowess at the cocoanuts.  Already she had won twenty-seven.  Strange children had been impressed by her to carry them, and formed her retinue.  A wonderful old lady was Aunt Wilshire....

Then across all the sunshine of this artless festival there appeared, as if it were writing showing through a picture, “France Invaded by Germany; Germany Invaded by Russia.”

Mr. Britling turned again towards the wicket, with its collectors of tribute, that led into the Gardens.

Section 12

The Claverings gardens, and particularly the great rockery, the lily pond, and the herbaceous borders, were unusually populous with unaccustomed visitors and shy young couples.  Mr. Britling had to go to the house for instructions, and guided by the under-butler found Lady Homartyn hiding away in the walled Dutch garden behind the dairy.  She had been giving away the prizes of the flower-show, and she was resting in a deck chair while a spinster relation presided over the tea.  Mrs. Britling had fled the outer festival earlier, and was sitting by the tea-things.  Lady Meade and two or three visitors had motored out from Hartleytree to assist, and Manning had come in with his tremendous confirmation of all that the morning papers had foreshadowed.