The Innocent Moon by Henry Williamson Page A

up.”
    “By what is called, euphemistically, the Art Editor, sir.”
    The old fellow went on to explain that some time previously he had suggested to the girls, on the breaking up of the Easter term, that as the weather was cold, they should take care to remember the old tag, Cast not a clout till May be out.
    “We get the cold Polar airs over the North Sea during the spring and early summer, you see. I rather think that the local representative of The Daily Trident got hold of the story somewhat late, and interpreted my remarks in the way you have seen. Do help yourself to coffee, won’t you?”
    “Please correct the stupid impression,” he continued in his mild voice. “I see other papers are repeating it. And only this morning I had a 200-word prepaid telegram from The Daily Picture, asking for my opinion on the subject of ‘Scandalous tendencies of modern woman’s dress’. Of course I don’t hold such silly opinions. If it is healthier and easier for women to wear skirts half-way between ankle and knee, as they have since the war, why shouldn’t they? Sensible dress does not mean that a woman is flighty, and prepared to abandon all modesty.”
    “Of course not, sir.”
    He thanked the parson and went away, promising that he would read an exposure of The Daily Trident in next Sunday’s Weekly Courier. In the train he wrote a long and scornful article, and on arrival at Euston took a taxi to Monks House. He was hardly inside the room when the jackdaw’s beak and eye peered round the door of the glass cage and the editorial voice croaked, “What’ve yer got?”
    “A scoop!” cried Philip, fumbling in his poacher-pocket. The jackdaw came out of the glass house, took the manuscript, glanced at sheet after sheet, dropped them one by one upon the floor; then on flat feet, with dejected head, he shuffled back into the cage.
    “You can’t write against the Trident ,” the voice said plaintively. “Don’t you know the Chief owns it?”
    “Of course! But this is true!”
    “What else’ve yer got?” shuffling out of the cage again.
    “Who owns the Picture, sir?”
    “The Chief’s brother. Why? What else’ve yer got?”
    “Old female aeronaut is polite foremother of the hamlet, articulate glorious Milton,” replied Phillip, with a straight face.
    Bloom glanced at the copy, and croaked, “Did she really say her father helped William Blake to publish his poems, and that she reads Conrad and finds him the greatest living writer in English, and that another hundred years aren’t enough for her to read all the authors she wants to read—Somerset Maugham, John Galsworthy, Henri Barbusse and T. S. Eliot? She did? All right, Newell, have it sent upstairs, but first take out that bit about her father knowing William Blake and she reads Conrad and the others by candle-light all night.”
    Left alone, Phillip looked at his V-blouse copy. All wasted. Harry Ownsworth came to his help, by suggesting that if hetook out the words blouse and modern dress, and put in a few negatives, he could turn it into Parson attacks Flighty Mothers. Hadn’t the rector said something about the unhappiness in a home caused by flightiness?
    Phillip rewrote the story from this viewpoint, and to salve his conscience went to see the Art editor, who arranged the photographs, and asked him to shave off the Kaiser moustache. When the first country edition appeared at 9.30 on Saturday night there the wretched rector was, on page 3, grim and grey-faced with pin-pointed dark eyes and stiff, clean-shaven upper lip.
    “What a cad I am.” he told Ownsworth. “That gentle host, treating me as though I were a gentleman!”
    “Better than have the Chief spotting the aged female aeronaut reading Conrad in the paper while The People reporter says she is an orphan who can neither read nor write,” grinned the News editor.
    On the Tuesday morning, when Phillip received an envelope with £12/12/-, Ownsworth said, “Bloom said you might be a new