The interview was printed. It was a dead season, and the question of Mullples came happily to the Editor’s hand. Frampton had so planted his hooks that a gudgeon of sorts came on to each one. The next day, a party of Press photographers, a member of the Save England Society, and some twenty amateur photographers came out to Mullples in different cars and ways, and took many views. The fat was in the fire.
Unfortunately, the opposition pitted against him, the local landowners, were not clever with their pens; they did not write to the Press. Ponk saw to it that the
This leader was followed up by a correspondence, some of it written in the office, signed Pro Bono Publico and Tatshire Man, the rest of it from Tatshire people, who wrote on both sides of the question much as follows:
“As one who has enjoyed many delightful picnics on Mullples Hill, I should like to ask whether Squatter’s Rights might not be invoked to prevent the threatened vandalism? I am not, unfortunately, in a good position financially, but should be glad to contribute my widow’s mite up to half a crown to defend what God meant to be for everyone. Vox Populi.”
The
“As one who was born within sight of Mullples Hill, one of a family of eleven, my father being a labourer earning twelve shillings a week, and paying one and sixpence out of that for a cottage which had only two rooms, one of which let in the rain through roof and walls, having been used as a pigsty by a former tenant, I say God speed Mr. Mansell, who plans to build beautiful homes there. As the bugs are very bad in the gentleman-owned house in which I live at present, I hope that I may be one of the favoured few to dwell there. It will be like living in the New Jerusalem. Bolshie and Proud of It.”
One of Ponk’s adherents replied to this as follows:
“One of my most treasured possessions is a withered dog-rose plucked by my little daughter Annie on the threatened hill, a week before her unexpected murder by a motor-car. I confess it would wring my heart cruelly to think that the scene of her last gambols was to be desecrated with ‘Bricks and Mortar.’ Broken-Hearted.”
Altogether the Press comment was lively, and sometimes sufficiently foolish to be quoted in the London Press as specimens of what we can do in that way.
Many little things had shown Fram, by this time, that he was to be cut by the sportsmen in those parts, and that none but sportsmen dwelled there; his father had been wise in that, as in so many things.
“Never mind,” he thought, “I can make my presence here felt by the fox-hunters, and by Jove I will.”
The thought of the angry ham returned to him daily, to harden his heart. But mixed with his loathing for her was an agony of rage at the injustice, that Margaret had been taken and that thing left. That hurt him cruelly, and in his pain he longed to hurt others.
“Oh to have a machine-gun range on all the Waste, to kill the Hunt utterly, and put that damned ham’s neck out of joint. Oh, to have a factory and a model village, from here to Coombe, so that the Tatchester slums may be done for, and a new generation grow up in clean air.”