midlands; and their two middle-aged corporals kept them well in hand and
ruled them like a band of brothers. But they had an illegal side, that
developed in directions that set Mr. Britling theorising. They seemed,
for example, to poach by nature, as children play and sing. They
possessed a promiscuous white dog. They began to add rabbits to their
supper menu, unaccountable rabbits. One night there was a mighty smell
of frying fish from the kitchen, and the cook reported trout. "Trout!"
said Mr. Britling to one of the corporals; "now where did you chaps get
trout?"

The "fisherman," they said, had got them with a hair noose. They
produced the fisherman, of whom they were manifestly proud. It was, he
explained, a method of fishing he had learnt when in New York Harbour.
He had been a stoker. He displayed a confidence in Mr. Britling that
made that gentleman an accessory after his offence, his very serious
offence against pre-war laws and customs. It was plain that the trout
were the trout that Mr. Pumshock, the stock-broker and amateur
gentleman, had preserved so carefully in the Easy. Hitherto the
countryside had been forced to regard Mr. Pumshock's trout with an
almost superstitious respect. A year ago young Snooker had done a month
for one of those very trout. But now things were different.

"But I don't really fancy fresh-water fish," said the fisherman. "It's
just the ketchin' of 'em I like...."

And a few weeks later the trumpeter, an angel-faced freckled child with
deep-blue eyes, brought in a dozen partridge eggs which he wanted Mary
to cook for him....

The domesticity of the sacred birds, it was clear, was no longer safe in