And she locked up all this knowledge in her large and compassionate heart, regarding the whole distressing scene with the tolerance and calm of one who had married three husbands and buried them all.

They had been no ordinary husbands either. Her first was said to have been a lion-tamer from a circus. Her second had endeavoured to predict the winners of horse races by studying the stars, and had lost all her savings, as as well as his own, through a trifling miscalculation about the date when Jupiter entered the aqueous sign of Pisces. Her third had possessed the absorbing hobby of collecting the labels off whisky-bottles and sticking them in a scrap-book; he had drunk himself to death during the war and left the labels of ninety-nine different brands as his strange memorial. From these and other experiences Florrie had acquired her comfortable conviction that it took all sorts to make a world.

But the manager, Old Screwnose as she called him, who now came creeping into the bar through the door at the back, nevertheless tried her patience sorely. He was carrying by their necks, as if they were snakes which might bite him, two bottles of whisky. “This is all you get,” he said defensively, dumping them on the counter. “It’s our Allocation.” That was one of the words which he always spoke reverently and as it were with a capital letter, as if they were some sort of abracadabra or mumbo-jumbo of which he stood in awe: Allocation, Triplicate, Quota, Directive; for in the war he had been a Temporary Civil Servant. To Florrie, who had worked for nearly a dozen innkeepers in her time, good and bad ones, drunken and sober ones, gamblers, spendthrifts, wife-beaters, likers of bits of skirt, and even one who had cut his throat in the cellar all among the beer barrels, Mr. Hawker was a source of perpetual astonishment and dismay. Not that there was anything remarkable about him, except his crooked nose; he was just an ordinary petty puritan, with a thin peaky face, sandy moustache, and rimless glasses, habited in the shiny black pin-stripe which had been his bureaucratic uniform. Among Licensed Victuallers, however, puritans and teetotallers are rare birds; and Florrie often caught herself staring at him as if he were a hoopoe hopping about on the lawn. All her previous employers, even the worst of them, had been like large or lesser suns, giving out light and warmth to customer and crony. They shone, they glowed in her memory, each the centre of a miniature solar system which revolved merrily about him. But Mr. Hawker generated no warmth; he was as cold as a dead star; he possessed no planetary cronies. His only interest in the customers took the form of a niggling apprehension lest they should misbehave themselves; and his only concern about the bar was how many glasses had been broken last week. He disapproved strongly of the Festival because he thought it would bring undesirable charabanc people to the town.

“It’s our Allocation,” he repeated. “Two for the Saloon, two for the Public; and lucky to get it.” The poster which Florrie had hung up over the Price List of drinks caught his eye, and he said:

“You oughtn’t to clutter up your bar with advertisements. I’ve told you before, you want to keep it dignified. And that one hides the prices.”

He shut the door behind him with a petulant slam just as Florrie was beginning to fluff herself up like an angry old hen.

“Well——” she said, taking a deep breath; and with her bosom heaving expressively she drew pints of beer for Lance and Robin, who had just come in together. Mr. Oxford resumed his historical discourse— “Take Lords and Ladies now—” and suddenly broke off, looking at Lance. Stephen was staring at Lance too, and Mr. Gurney had put down his drink and turned round in his chair in order to get a better view; for Lance had a really remarkable black eye. Robin’s swollen lips and bruised chin were only slightly less obvious.

“Well, here’s to you, my dear chap,” said Robin, with a painful grin.

“Bless your old heart,” said Lance, raising his glass.

Florrie winked at Stephen, as if to say: “I know all about it”—which undoubtedly she did; and Robin and Lance clinked their glasses together as if they were drinking a loving-cup. In his lazy and offensive drawl Sir Almeric addressed them both:

“A little difference of opinion over a lady, perhaps?”

Lance swung round angrily, and Stephen had the pleasant fancy that his sword-hand moved towards his hip. Once again Stephen was aware of the feeling of conflict he had had in the street, which had reminded him of Verona: “And now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.” Lance and Robin might indeed have been two tall young Elizabethans, lean, eager, quick on the draw, their days and nights gloriously compounded of poetry and brawls and Juliets and Rosalines; nor did it take much imagination to turn the arrogant Sir Almeric into Tybalt. The thought occurred to Stephen suddenly that the real Pageant was here, in this bar, in the streets, in the shops and houses, in the balloon factory; and that whatever happened six weeks hence in front of the grandstand on the Bloody Meadow would be by comparison but a rattling of dry bones.

Robin touched Lance on the arm and they drew apart, taking their beer into the farthest corner of the room, where they soon began to chuckle together over some private joke. The Mayor had just come in, with Councillor Noakes as usual at his heels; and now Mr.