Mrs. Britling shared the paper with Mr. Britling, they stood by the bed of begonias near the cedar tree and read, and the air was full of the cheerful activities of the lawn-mower that was being drawn by a carefully booted horse across the hockey field.

Presently Hugh came flitting out of the house to hear what had happened.  “One can’t work somehow, with all these big things going on,” he apologised.  He secured the Daily News while his father and mother read The Times.  The voices of the younger boys came from the shade of the trees; they had brought all their toy soldiers out of doors, and were making entrenched camps in the garden.

“The financial situation is an extraordinary one,” said Mr. Britling, concentrating his attention....  “All sorts of staggering things may happen.  In a social and economic system that has grown just anyhow....  Never been planned....  In a world full of Mrs. Fabers....”

“Moratorium?” said Hugh over his Daily News.  “In relation to debts and so on?  Modern side you sent me to, Daddy.  I live at hand to mouth in etymology.  Mors and crematorium—­do we burn our bills instead of paying them?”

“Moratorium,” reflected Mr. Britling; “Moratorium.  What nonsense you talk!  It’s something that delays, of course.  Nothing to do with death.  Just a temporary stoppage of payments....  Of course there’s bound to be a tremendous change in values....”

Section 4

“There’s bound to be a tremendous change in values.”

On that text Mr. Britling’s mind enlarged very rapidly.  It produced a wonderful crop of possibilities before he got back to his study.  He sat down to his desk, but he did not immediately take up his work.  He had discovered something so revolutionary in his personal affairs that even the war issue remained for a time in suspense.

Tucked away in the back of Mr. Britling’s consciousness was something that had not always been there, something warm and comforting that made life and his general thoughts about life much easier and pleasanter than they would otherwise have been, the sense of a neatly arranged investment list, a shrewdly and geographically distributed system of holdings in national loans, municipal investments, railway debentures, that had amounted altogether to rather over five-and-twenty thousand pounds; his and Mrs. Britling’s, a joint accumulation.  This was, so to speak, his economic viscera.  It sustained him, and kept him going and comfortable.  When all was well he did not feel its existence; he had merely a pleasant sense of general well-being.  When here or there a security got a little disarranged he felt a vague discomfort.  Now he became aware of grave disorders.  It was as if he discovered he had been accidentally eating toadstools, and didn’t quite know whether they weren’t a highly poisonous sort.  But an analogy may be carried too far....