“I thank you for your sympathy, madam,” Lavender, running his hand through his hair; “in moments like these one realizes the deep humanity of the British people.  I really believe that in no other race could you find such universal interest and anxiety to recover a hat.  Say what you will, we are a great nation, who only, need rousing to show our best qualities.  Do you remember the words of the editor:  ’In the spavined and spatch-cocked ruin to which our inhuman enemies have reduced civilization, we of the island shine with undimmed effulgence in all those qualities which mark man out from the ravening beast’?”

“But how are you going to get your hat?” asked the old lady.

“I know not,” returned Mr. Lavender, still under the influence of the sentiment he had quoted; “but if I had fifteen hats I would take them all off to the virtues which have been ascribed to the British people by all those great men who have written and spoken since the war began.”

“Yes,” said the old lady soothingly.  “But, I think you had better come under my sunshade.  The sun is very strong.”

“Madam,” said Mr. Lavender, “you are very good, but your sunshade is too small.  To deprive you of even an inch of its shade would be unworthy of anyone in public life.”  So saying, he recoiled from the proffered sunshade into the pond, which he had forgotten was behind him.

“Oh, dear!” said the old lady; “now you’ve got your feet wet!”

“It is nothing,” responded Mr. Lavender gallantly.  And seeing that he was already wet, he rolled up his trousers, and holding up the tails of his holland coat, turned round and proceeded towards his hat, to the frantic delight of the crowd.

“The war is a lesson to us to make little of little things,” he thought, securing the hat and wringing it out.  “My feet are wet, but—­how much wetter they would be in the trenches, if feet can be wetter than wet through,” he mused with some exactitude.  “Down, Blink, down!” For Blink was plastering him with the water-marks of joy and anxiety.  “Nothing is quite so beautiful as the devotion of one’s own dog,” thought Mr. Lavender, resuming the hat, and returning towards the shore.  The by-now-considerable throng were watching him with every mark of acute enjoyment; and the moment appeared to Mr. Lavender auspicious for addressing them.  Without, therefore, emerging from the pond, which he took for his, platform, he spoke as follows: 

“Circumstances over which I have no control have given me the advantage of your presence in numbers which do credit to the heart of the nation to which we all belong.  In the midst of the greatest war which ever threatened the principle of Liberty, I rejoice to see so many people able to follow the free and spontaneous impulses of their inmost beings.  For, while we must remember that our every hour is at the disposal of our country, we must not forget the maxim of our fathers:  ’Britons never will be slaves.’  Only by preserving the freedom of individual conscience, and at the same time surrendering it whole-heartedly to every which the State makes on us, can we hope defeat the machinations of the arch enemies of mankind.”