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Updated: May 6, 2025
His legs, his arms, his face, even his hair, unless his son in the Coldstream happened to be at home at the time, were long. "Is your father mad?" Mr. Chubble once asked of Dick Hazlewood. The two men had met in the broad street of Great Beeding at midday, and the elder one, bubbling with indignation, had planted himself in front of Dick. "Mad?" Dick repeated reflectively.
"Can you give me the key to him?" he cried. "I can." "Then out with it, my lad." Mr. Chubble disposed himself to listen but with so bristling an expression that it was clear no explanation could satisfy him. Dick, however, took no heed of that. He spoke slowly as one lecturing to an obtuse class of scholars.
"No, I shouldn't go as far as that. Oh no! What has he done now?" "He has paid out of his own pocket the fines of all the people in Great Beeding who have just been convicted for not having their babies vaccinated." Dick Hazlewood stared in surprise at his companion's indignant face. "But of course he'd do that, Mr. Chubble," he answered cheerfully.
A yellow drive of gravel ran straight between long broad flower-beds to the door. "Won't you come in and see my father?" Dick asked innocently. "He's at home." "No, my lad, no." Mr. Chubble hastened to add: "I haven't the time. But I am very glad to have met you. You are here for long?" "No. Only just for luncheon," said Dick, and he walked along the drive into the house.
"Are you walking home?" "Yes." "Let us walk together." Mr. Chubble took Dick Hazlewood by the arm and as they went filled the lane with his plaints. "I should think you can't deny it. Why, he has actually written a pamphlet to enforce his views upon the subject." "You should bless your stars, Mr. Chubble, that there is only one. He suffers from pamphlets.
He writes 'em and prints 'em and every member of Parliament gets one of 'em for nothing. Pamphlets do for him what the gout does for other old gentlemen they carry off from his system a great number of disquieting ailments. He's at prison reform now," said Dick with a smile of thorough enjoyment. "Have you heard him on it?" "No, and I don't want to," Mr. Chubble exploded.
He now lived in the big house to which the village owed its name and indeed its existence. He lived and spread consternation amongst the gentry for miles round. "Lord, how I wish poor Arthur hadn't died!" old John Chubble used to cry. He had hunted the West Sussex hounds for thirty years and the very name of Little Beeding turned his red face purple. "There was a man. But this fellow!
Chubble grunted and turned the speech suspiciously over in his mind. Was Dick poking fun at him or at his father? "That's bookish," he said. "I am afraid it is," Dick Hazlewood agreed humbly. "The fact is I am now an Instructor at the Staff College and much is expected of me." They had reached the gate of Little Beeding House. It was summer time.
"What did I say to you a minute ago? He's advanced, you know." "Advanced!" sneered Mr. Chubble, and then Dick Hazlewood stopped and contemplated his companion with a thoughtful eye. "I really don't think you understand my father, Mr. Chubble," said Dick with a gentle remonstrance in his voice which Mr. Chubble was at a loss whether to take seriously or no.
"He's anti-everything everything, I mean, which experience has established or prudence could suggest." "In addition he wants to sell the navy for old iron and abolish the army." "Yes," said Dick, nodding his head amicably. "He's like that. He thinks that without an army and a navy we should be less aggressive. I can't deny it." "I should think not indeed," cried Mr. Chubble.
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