At last Stephen could stand it no longer, and making the excuse that he must personally inspect the outrage he escaped from the shop and followed in the footsteps of Mr. Gurney, who had just “dodged out” (Back in half an hour) to have his mid-morning drink at the Red Lion.

Even in the sleepy High Street one could not help being aware of conflict, frayed tempers, and a population at odds among themselves. Wherever two passers-by had paused to have a word together, or a small group stood gossiping outside a shop, it was ten to one they were disputing either about the Festival or about the Beauty Queens. No longer had the Mayor any reason to complain of apathy. “Rouse ’em, Runcorn, rouse ’em,” he had said; and Mr. Runcorn had responded with a colourful leader about “the verdant meadow, known as Sanguinary, encompassed by umbrageous trees.” It had finished neatly with a quotation from Shakespeare: “This green plot shall be our stage.” Probably hardly anybody had bothered to read it, but the unpredictable citizens had roused themselves with a vengeance. Unfortunately theirs was not exactly the enthusiastic awakening the Mayor had looked forward to; it was more like the resentful agitation of ants in a suddenly disturbed anthill.

Half-way up the street Stephen found the Inspector of Police, with two of his men, scraping the offending posters off the walls. This pompous and lugubrious individual, whose unsuitable name was Heyhoe, hinted to Stephen that although he was doing his duty he didn’t hold with the Festival either. “I looks around me,” he said, “and what do I see but trouble, trouble everywhere?” He was, however, already on the track of the culprits, for he had searched the balloon factory “from floor to ceiling” and at last had discovered a paste-pot. The paste, he said, in the tone of one speaking of bloodstains, was still wet. He had impounded the pot in case it should be required as an exhibit in court.

Next Stephen called at Mr. Handiman’s shop, which had recently been opened as the Festival Booking Office with Virginia in charge. She had been lent to the Committee by Mr. Runcorn, an act of self-sacrifice more apparent than real; and now she dreamed her day-dreams over an immaculate seating-plan, as virginal as herself, that had not so far a single X in any of its multitudinous squares. It was Councillor Noakes who had urged that a Beauty Queen would be the very person to sell tickets; but Stephen had his doubts when he entered the shop and Virginia did not even look up from the sheet of paper on which, in round schoolgirlish characters, she was copying something from a magazine.

He coughed, and she came to earth from the dizzy heights of stardom, fluttering her eyelids at him.

“Not very busy yet,” he said.

“Ay’m not expecting a rush till nearer the tame.”

He glanced over her shoulder at the sheet of paper and read: K2 tog, PI, K2 …

“It’s a pettern,” she explained, “for a twin-set.”

“Oh, I see.” Glancing out of the window, from which Mr. Handiman had at last removed the unseasonable skates, Stephen became aware of a square poster stuck on the outside of the pane, next to Robin’s oblong one.

“Good Lord, look at that!” he said.

It was quite easy to read the big letters backwards: WE DON’T WANT FESTIVALS. …

“Well, Ay never !” was all Virginia said.

Stephen went out and scratched off the poster with a penknife. There was something of the Nelson Touch, he thought, about Miss Foulkes’ campaign; and he smiled as there came into his mind’s eye a picture of that angular little figure padding about the town in the small hours, probably wearing gym-shoes and the kind of dirty old mackintosh which revolutionaries all over the world seemed to favour; dabbling away with the paste-brush, scurrying round corners, lurking breathless in the dark shadows, and imagining herself to be at last of true fellowship with Sacco and Vanzetti and Dimitrov and all the other martyrs in the Leftists’ hagiology. (But Dimitrov, Stephen remembered, had deviated; he had been liquidated and expunged from proletarian memory.) Poor little Miss Foulkes! he thought, and hoped sincerely that Inspector Heyhoe wouldn’t catch her and drag her to court on some such silly charge as Unauthorised Billposting—if indeed there was such an offence in the catalogue. The way to deal with Miss Foulkes was not to take her seriously; and to laugh off the posters as if they were a boy’s prank.

Stephen threw the bits of paper into the gutter and continued on his way to the Red Lion.

II

Lounging On the bar, in a canary-yellow polo jumper t and a segmented tweed cap with a little button on the crown of it such as English milords are supposed by the French to wear, Sir Almeric Jukes, Baronet and Master of Foxhounds, was holding forth on the subject of the Beauty Queens.

“A good-lookin’ pair of fillies,” he said. “High-spirited. A fine pair of fillies.”

The Festival Committee had appointed him Master of the Horse. He had also been cast originally for Edward Prince of Wales; but he had seemed to think that his horsemanship would show to better advantage if he were on the winning side, so he was going to lead the victorious charge of the Yorkists on his own grey steeplechaser. He was an arrogant and supercilious young man, who had made it clear at the first rehearsal that he did not intend to take orders from anybody—least of all from a second-hand bookseller. Stephen disliked him intensely.

“I dunno which of ’em to put my money on,” he drawled. “’Pon my word I don’t.”

He was addressing Mr. Gurney, who sat in his customary corner with his umbrella between his knees. At the other end of the bar, Florrie, the old barmaid, had just hung up one of Robin’s posters, and her two most faithful customers, Mr. Oxford and his friend Timms were admiring it and talking about History.

“What I always says,” declared Mr. Oxford, whose real surname was possibly Huxford, but he had persuaded the world to accept his own version of it, “is that ’istory is tradition and tradition is ’istory, if you see what I mean.”

“Plain as a pikestaff, old man,” agreed Timms the pianotuner—at least that had been his profession long ago, but the owners of pianos nowadays mostly regarded them as pieces of furniture, which had to be dusted but need not be tuned, so Timms had drifted into a more profitable job, that of bookie’s runner to Mr.