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Bat had both the lodge-gates stencilled "The Earth is flat!" and all the barns and walls they could get at.... Oh Lord, but Huckley was drunk! We had to fill 'em up to make 'em forgive us for not being aeroplanes. Unthankful yokels! D'you realise that Emperors couldn't have commanded the talent Bat decanted on 'em? Why, 'Dal alone was.... And by eight o'clock not even a bit of paper left!
'For his poor, dear wife's sake I hope that, very much indeed. I suppose he didn't see me in Court. Oh, here's the parish history of Huckley written by the Rector and here's your share of the picture-postcards. Are we all dining with this Mr. Masquerier to-night? 'Yes! said we all. If Woodhouse knew nothing of journalism, young Ollyett, who had graduated in a hard school, knew a good deal.
Otherwise he spoke and wrote trade-English a toothsome amalgam of Americanisms and epigrams. But though the slang changes the game never alters, and Ollyett and I and, in the end, some others enjoyed it immensely. But we did not neglect Huckley. As Ollyett said our first care was to create an 'arresting atmosphere' round it.
'You see, said Ollyett, 'this is much more of a blow to Huckley than it looks because every word of it's true. Your Gubby dance was inspiration, I admit, but it hadn't its roots in 'Two hemispheres and four continents so far, I pointed out. 'Its roots in the hearts of Huckley was what I was going to say. Why don't you ever come down and look at the place?
The fat man then took his seat on the Bench, of which he was chairman, and I gathered from a bystander that his name was Sir Thomas Ingell, Bart., M.P., of Ingell Park, Huckley. He began with an allocution pitched in a tone that would have justified revolt throughout empires. Evidence, when the crowded little court did not drown it with applause, was given in the pauses of the address.
A shell-pink motor-brake roared up behind us to the music on a key-bugle of 'The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat. In a few minutes we overtook another, in natural wood, whose occupants were singing it through their noses. 'I don't know that agency. It must be Cook's, said Ollyett. 'They do suffer. We were never out of earshot of the tune the rest of the way to Huckley.
That was all Huckley. I'm doing a "Mobiquity" on Huckley next week. Ollyett wrote the stuff with a fervour and a delicacy which I always ascribed to the side-car. His account of Epping Forest, for instance, was simply young love with its soul at its lips. But his Huckley 'Mobiquity' would have sickened a soap-boiler.
Earth as we knew it the full circuit of our orb laid the weight of its impersonal and searing curiosity on this Huckley which had voted that it was flat. It asked for news about Huckley where and what it might be, and how it talked it knew how it danced and how it thought in its wonderful soul.
Woodhouse says he'll run us down after lunch. He wants to see Huckley too. Pallant could not accompany us, but Bat took his place. 'It's odd, said Bat, 'that none of us except Ollyett has ever set eyes on Huckley since that time. That's what I always tell My people. Local colour is all right after you've got your idea.
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