And the True Gentleman is patriotic also. When one saw Coote lifting his hat to the National Anthem, then perhaps one got a glimpse of what patriotic emotions, what worship, the polish of a gentleman may hide. Or singing out his deep notes against the Hosts of Midian, in the St. Stylites choir; then indeed you plumbed his spiritual side.
Christian, dost thou heed them,
On the holy ground,
How the hosts of Mid-i-an,
Prowl and prowl around!
Christian, up and smai-it them.…
But these were but gleams. For the rest, Religion, Nationality, Passion, Money, Politics; much more so those cardinal issues, Birth and Death, the True Gentleman skirted about, and became facially rigid towards and ceased to speak and panted and blew.
"One doesn't talk of that sort of thing," Coote would say with a gesture of the knuckly hand.
"O' course," Kipps would reply, with an equal significance.
Profundities. Deep as it were, blowing to deep.
One does not talk, but on the other hand one is punctilious to do. Actions speak. Kipps—in spite of the fact that the Walshinghams were more than a little lax—Kipps, who had formerly flitted Sunday after Sunday from one Folkestone church to another, had now a sitting of his own, paid for duly at Saint Stylites. There he was to be seen, always at the sur-
