THE ANGELS OF MONS
and bigger, till it is now swollen to a monstrous size. I say that the snowball began its career in April or thereabouts; and herein I refer to its visible and public course, as it were, in the press. But no doubt many hidden hands had been patting and preparing it in the darkness; there had been many months of gossip by word of mouth before hearsay attained the honours which the compositor bestows.
It was at about this period that variants of my tale began to be told as authentic histories. At first, these tales betrayed their relation to their original. In several of them the vegetarian restaurant appeared, and St. George was the chief character. In one case an officer—name and address missing—said that there was a portrait of St. George in a certain London restaurant, and that a figure, just like the portrait, appeared to him on
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