days have slipped by happily and peacefully enough, but without any
happenings worthy of record. We returned the Vicar's call, and were
asked to tea to meet ourselves, when Mrs Merrivale took the opportunity
to ask me the address of my dressmaker! Two staid dames, who lived in
small villa residences, left cards at the door, an attention which we
duly returned in kind. The important people in the neighbourhood have
left us severely alone, whirling past our gates to pay assiduous calls
on General Underwood. He is the local hero, and we are the hard-hearted
strangers who did _Something_--nobody knows precisely _what_--but
_Something_ mean, and underhand, and altogether unwomanly about a lease,
and so forced the poor dear General to endure draughts and cold rooms,
and seriously retarded his progress towards health! It's no use
pretending that I am not sorry about it, for I _am_; but all the same,
they have been happy months. Charmion has seemed so much brighter and
more contented, and that itself means much to me, and we have been as
happy as bees in our beloved garden, bullying our one man into preparing
what he considers absolutely mad effects, and working with him to keep
him up to the mark. We have flagged one path, and turfed over another,
raised some beds, and sunk others, and contrived a really glorious
hot-weather arbour, a good six yards in diameter, and open on three
sides, to secure plenty of fresh air and an absence of flies.

Charmion has hardly gone out of the gate, except to church on Sundays,
but I take a constitutional every day, and scour the country-side.

My first encounter with the Squire came off about the third week we were
here, and my imaginings were wrong in all but two unimportant points.
Mrs Maplestone wears voluminous sables and clothes of antique cut; but
they look quite charming and appropriate, for--she is antique herself!

She is the Squire's mother, not his wife. He hasn't got a wife; never
has had one, and never will. Hates all women and their ways. Avoids
feminine society, and has never been known to pay a girl five minutes'
attention in his life! Such is the village verdict as repeated to me
through Bridget, who has a _flair_ for gossip, and is one of those
wonderful people who cannot walk half a mile along a solitary country
lane, without hearing, or seeing, or mentally absorbing some interesting
item about the lives of her fellow-creatures!

Every night when she brushes