envisaging them critically, would have tossed his poor little story to
the winds, as a small thing magnified: with an object, being the next
thought about it. He knew his Fleetwood so far.

His letter concluded: 'I am in a small Surrey village over a baker's
shop, rent eight shillings per week, a dame's infant school opposite my
window, miles of firwood, heath, and bracken openings, for the winged or
the nested fancies. Love Nature, she makes you a lord of her boundless,
off any ten square feet of common earth. I go through my illusions and
come always back on that good truth. It says, beware of the world's
passion for flavours and spices. Much tasted, they turn and bite the
biter. My exemplars are the lately breeched youngsters with two pence in
their pockets for the gingerbread-nut booth on a fair day. I learn more
from one of them than you can from the whole cavalcade of your attendant
Ixionides.'

Mounting the box of his coach for the drive to London, Fleetwood had the
new name for the parasitic and sham vital troop at his ears.

'My Ixionides!' he repeated, and did not scorn them so much as he
rejoiced to be enlightened by the title. He craved the presence of the
magician who dropped illumination with a single word; wholesomer to think
of than the whole body of those Ixionides--not bad fellows, here and
there, he reflected, tolerantly, half laughing at some of their clownish
fun. Gower Woodseer and he had not quarrelled? No, they had merely
parted at one of the crossways. The plebeian could teach that son of
the, genuflexions, Lord Feltre, a lesson in manners. Woodseer was the
better comrade and director of routes. Into the forest, up on the
heights; and free, not locked; and not parroting day and night, but quick
for all that the world has learnt and can tell, though two-thirds of it