"Difference to what?" said Richard, ex-chief of the Elder Statesmen,
unsympathetically. Like his father before him, he disliked change.

"Well, hold on!" said Larry, quickly, "wait just one minute, and I'll
tell you. I got the notion out of a book I found in the library. I
don't expect I'd have thought of it myself--" Larry's transparent
sky-blue eyes sought Richard's appealingly. "It's--it's only poems,
you know, but it's most frightfully interesting--I brought it with
me--"

"Oh--poems!" said Richard, without enthusiasm. "Are they long ones?"

"I don't seem to care so awfully much about poetry," abetted Judith,
late Second-in-command.

John looked sapient, and said, neutrally, that some poetry wasn't bad.

The Twins, who were engaged in a silent but bitter struggle for the
corpse of a white rabbit, recently born dead, made no comment. Only
Christian, her small hands clenched together into a brown knot, her
eyes fastened on Larry's flushed face, murmured:

"Go on, Larry!"

Larry went on.

"It's called the Spirit of the Nation," he said. "It's full of
splendid stuff about Ireland, and the beastly way England's treated
her. It sort of--sort of put the notion into my head that we might