"It's rot anyhow," Betty returned, without interest, turning her hat about critically. "You should just hear the way they're all going on about it in the village. Stuff and nonsense, I call it. And as long as people like me and the village—normal, ordinary people—think it's stuff and nonsense, ... well, it will be stuff and nonsense, that's all."
"People like you," Ivy retorted witheringly, as she changed her skirt for her country breeches.
But, after all, that retort didn't dispose of Betty, or the people like Betty ... or the whole vicarage family ... or most of Little Chantreys.... Those people, after all, were going to take more disposing of than that.... They were, quite possibly, going to take more disposing of than anyone yet knew.
"Silly ass," said Ivy, but with a touch of doubt.
She thought her new green breeches were rather nice, anyhow, and that seemed to matter more.
3
Kitty found her brother Cyril at the End House. Cyril was in a poor way. His publishing business was on the edge of bankruptcy.
"So much for your abominable Brains Ministry," he complained. "The mass of safe, mediocre stuff on which publishers count for a living while they adventure with the risks is being gradually withdrawn. It simply doesn't come in. Its producers are becoming—many of them—just too intelligent. I'm not imagining this; I know of several cases in which it has happened; of people who have developed just enough distaste for their own work to dry them up altogether. What's worse, there isn't the same sale for such stuff as there was. When the process has gone much further (if ever it does)—so far that a lot of really good stuff is turned out, and read by large numbers of people, business will be all right again. Till then, publishers are in a poor way.... Verse is dropping off, too, like autumn leaves. That's all to the good.... I daresay in another year or two (unless you're wrecked first, which seems probable, by the way) there'll only be about a hundred people left in the country writing anything at all.... Newspapers, of course, go on much the same; that's because you're afraid of them and exempt their staff. Insignificant verse and meaningless novels may die a natural death (though I think it improbable), but Myosotis and the Patriot and the Daily Idiot will go on for ever. You're all such cowards at Whitehall. You dare to ruin unoffending publishers, to browbeat the poor and simple, and to extract gold from the innocent babe unborn, but you daren't risk the favour of the press."
"No," Kitty agreed. "We certainly daren't.... Not that we've got it, you know, quite the contrary; but we strive for it. I was reading the Herald and Stop It in the train, till I was cold with fear. Stop It veils its meaning delicately, as usual; but it means business.... However, I thought we should have been downed six months ago, yet here we are still. It's like skating on rotten ice so fast that it never breaks. It's fun; it's exciting. And I believe if we go on skating fast, it won't break at all. You see, the government are getting cleverer and cleverer themselves, which will help them to do it skilfully. Chester says his head really does feel clearer after taking the Course; he says so in private life, I mean, not only when he's soft-soaping the public."
"He'll need," said Anthony, "a jolly clear head before he's through with this job. With every door-step in our towns and villages piled with exposed babies ... it's worse than China. Much worse, because I believe in China they don't get put on door-steps, but left harmlessly out of the way in open fields and no one meddles with them. It's becoming a public nuisance."