Mr. Standfast by John Buchan
page 30 of 439 (06%)
page 30 of 439 (06%)
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who are at the head of all the newest movements, and that the
intellectual history of England is being made in our studies and gardens. The war to us seems a remote and secondary affair. As someone has said, the great fights of the world are all fought in the mind.' A spasm of pain crossed her husband's face. 'I wish I could feel it far away. After all, Ursula, it is the sacrifice of the young that gives people like us leisure and peace to think. Our duty is to do the best which is permitted to us, but that duty is a poor thing compared with what our young soldiers are giving! I may be quite wrong about the war ... I know I can't argue with Letchford. But I will not pretend to a superiority I do not feel.' I went to bed feeling that in jimson I had struck a pretty sound fellow. As I lit the candles on my dressing-table I observed that the stack of silver which I had taken out of my pockets when I washed before supper was top-heavy. It had two big coins at the top and sixpences and shillings beneath. Now it is one of my oddities that ever since I was a small boy I have arranged my loose coins symmetrically, with the smallest uppermost. That made me observant and led me to notice a second point. The English classics on the top of the chest of drawers were not in the order I had left them. Izaak Walton had got to the left of Sir Thomas Browne, and the poet Burns was wedged disconsolately between two volumes of Hazlitt. Moreover a receipted bill which I had stuck in the _Pilgrim's _Progress to mark my place had been moved. Someone had been going through my belongings. A moment's reflection convinced me that it couldn't have been |
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