*    *    *    *    *

The sun had gone in for the time being, and the east wind was frolicking round him
like a playful puppy, patting him with a cold paw, nuzzling his ankles, bounding away
and bounding back again, and behaving generally as east winds do when they discover
a victim who has come out without his spring overcoat. It was plain to George now
that the sun and the wind were a couple of confidence tricksters working together
as a team. The sun had disarmed him with specious promises and an air of cheery
goodfellowship, and had delivered him into the hands of the wind, which was now
going through him with the swift thoroughness of the professional hold-up artist.

*    *    *    *    *

"Thank you so much," murmured a voice behind him. It seemed to come from the floor.
"Not at all," said George, trying a sort of vocal chip-shot out of the corner of
his mouth, designed to lift his voice backwards and lay it dead inside the cab.

*    *    *    *    *

War is war, and love is love, and in each the practical man inclines
to demand from his fellow-workers the punch rather than the lofty soul.

*    *    *    *    *

George did not know who Mr. Plummer was. He did not want to know. His only
thought regarding Mr. Plummer was a passionate realization of the superfluity
of his existence. It is the presence on the globe of these Plummers that delays
the coming of the Millennium.

*    *    *    *    *

Another hundred yards, and the blister no longer consented to be ignored. It cried
for attention like a little child, and was rapidly insinuating itself into a position
into the scheme of things where it threatened to become the centre of the world. By the
time the third bend in the road was reached, it seemed to Percy that this blister had
become the one great Fact in an unreal nightmare-like universe.

*    *    *    *    *

The mud stuck to him like a brother.

*    *    *    *    *

She moved off quickly across the field. Darkness covered her. The dog
in the distance had begun to howl again. He had his troubles, too.

*    *    *    *    *

George began to sit up and take notice. A cloud seemed to have cleared
from his brain. He found himself looking at his fellow-diners as individuals
rather than as a confused mass. The prophet Daniel, after the initial
embarrassment of finding himself in the society of the lions had passed
away, must have experienced a somewhat similar sensation.

*    *    *    *    *

She cast one glance, fresh from the refrigerator, at the shrinking George,
and elevated her aristocratic eye-brows.

*    *    *    *    *