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To be sure, we left these extravagances to the children. But childhood, after all, is a relative term, and in Troy we pass through it to sober age by nice gradations; which take time. Already a foreign sailor who had committed the double imprudence of drinking heavily at the Crown and Anchor, and falling asleep afterwards on the foreshore while waiting for his boat, was complaining vigorously, through his Vice-Consul, of the varieties of treatment practised upon his insensible body; and only the difficulty of tracing five Esmarch bandages in a town where five hundred had been sold in a fortnight averted a prosecution. I was even prepared for a visit from Sir Felix Felix-Williams, our worthy Squire, who seldom misses an opportunity of turning our local enthusiasms to account, and sometimes does me the honour to enlist my help; but scarcely for the turn his suggestions took.

“You are, of course, interested in this movement?” he began.

“I have to be, seeing that I live in the midst of it.”

“You have joined the Ambulance Class, I hear.”

“Do you think I would neglect a precaution so obvious? Until their enthusiasm abates, I certainly shall range myself among the First-Aiders rather than the Injured.”

“My idea was, to strike while the iron is hot.”

“Oh,” said I, “a town with so many in the fire–“

“And I thought, perhaps, if we could manage to connect it in some way with the Primrose League–“

“But what can it have to do with the Primrose League?” I asked stiffly. I will admit now to a slight prejudice against the Ambulance business– due perhaps to the lecturer’s having chosen to start it in my absence.

Sir Felix was disappointed, and showed it. “Why, it was you,” he reminded me, “who helped us last year by setting the widows to race for a leg of mutton.”

“I was a symbolist in those days. And, excuse me, Sir Felix, it was not last year, but the year before. Last year we had the surrender of Cronje at Paardeberg, with the widows dressed up as Boer women.”

“Is that so? I thought we had Cronje two years ago, but no doubt you are right. Now I thought that, with our Primrose fete coming on, and everybody just now taking such an interest in the Empire–“

“To be sure!” I cried. “‘First Aid to the Empire’–it will look well on the bills.”

Sir Felix rubbed his hands together–a trick of his when he is pleased. “It’s an idea, eh?”

“A brilliant one.”

“Well, but you haven’t heard all.” He looked at me almost slyly. “It occurred to me, that while–er–associating this enthusiasm of ours with the imperial idea, we might at the same time do a good turn for ourselves. You think that permissible?”

“Permissible? For what else does an empire exist?”

“Quite so. As I was saying to Lady Williams, only this morning, we must bring home to less thoughtful persons a sense of its beneficence. Now it occurs to me: why go on subscribing to these great public Nursing Funds, in which our mite is a mere drop in the ocean, when by sending up a nurse from our own town–she would, of course, be a member of the League–not only should we have the satisfaction of knowing that our help is effective, but the young woman would be earning a salary and supporting herself?”

“Admirable!” said I. “It would look so much better in the papers too.”

“You see, we have at this moment a score of young women, all natives of the town and members of the League, undergoing instruction from our lecturer. After the course there will be an examination; and then, with the lecturer’s help–and the advice, if I might suggest it, of Lady Williams, who can tell him if the candidate’s family be respectable and deserving–we can surely select a young person to do us credit.”