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 disappear into them, so to speak, like a rusty family ghost. He would travel a hundred miles to see a friend for an hour, and then waste half an hour with his head in some odd volume he never happened to have seen before. On all that side of him there was a sort of almost creepy unconsciousness. His wife, who had old-world notions of the graces of a hostess, sometimes had double work to do.

"The recent success of the agrarian protest," began Hood cheerfully as his wife rose swiftly to receive two more visitors. These were Professor Green and Commander Bellew Blair; for a queer friendship had long linked together the most practical and the most unpractical of the brothers of the Long Bow. The friendship, as Pierce remarked, was firmly rooted in the square root of minus infinity.

"How beautiful your garden is looking," said Blair to his hostess. "One so seldom sees flower-beds like that now; but I shall always think the old gardeners were right."

"Most things are old-fashioned here, I'm afraid," replied Elizabeth, "but I always like them like that. And how are the children?"

"The recent success of the agrarian protest," remarked her husband in a clear voice, "is doubtless"