"You'll excuse me"—he turned to the Vicar—"but if what you say is correct (you may go, Scipio) it puts me in a position of some responsibility."
"I felt sure you would see it in that light. It's a responsibility for me, too."
"To-day is the twenty-fifth. We have little more than a month."
"What am I to say in church next Sunday?"
"Why, as for that, you must say nothing. Good Heavens! is this a time for adding to the disquietude of men's minds?"
"I had thought," the Vicar confessed, "of memorialising the Government."
"Addington!" The Major's tone whenever he had occasion to mention Mr. Addington was a study in scornful expression. He himself had once memorialised the Prime Minister for a couple of nineteen-pounders which, with the two on the Old Fort, would have made our harbour impregnable. "Addington! It's hard on you, I know," he went on sympathetically, "to keep a discovery like this to yourself. But we might tell Hansombody."
"Why Hansombody?" For the second time a suspicion crossed the Vicar's mind that his hearers were confusing the Millennium with some infectious ailment.
"It is bound to affect his practice," suggested Miss Marty.
"To be sure," the Major chimed in. As a matter of fact, he attached great importance to the apothecary's judgment, and was wont to lean on it, though not too ostentatiously. "It can hardly fail to affect his practice. I think, in common justice, Hansombody ought to be told; that is, if you are quite sure of your ground."