CHAPTER I
OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY


1

"This here Progress," said Mr. Tom Smallways, "it keeps on."

"You'd hardly think it could keep on," said Mr. Tom Smallways.

It was along before the War in the Air began that Mr. Smallways
made this remark. He was sitting on the fence at the end of his
garden and surveying the great Bun Hill gas-works with an eye
that neither praised nor blamed. Above the clustering gasometers
three unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin, wallowing bladders that
flapped and rolled about, and grew bigger and bigger and rounder
and rounder--balloons in course of inflation for the South of
England Aero Club's Saturday-afternoon ascent.

"They goes up every Saturday," said his neighbour, Mr. Stringer,
the milkman. "It's only yestiday, so to speak, when all London
turned out to see a balloon go over, and now every little place
in the country has its weekly-outings--uppings, rather. It's
been the salvation of them gas companies."

"Larst Satiday I got three barrer-loads of gravel off my
petaters," said Mr. Tom Smallways. "Three barrer-loads! What
they dropped as ballase. Some of the plants was broke, and some