n that in such
sparsely populated districts the enterprising builder would stand an
excellent chance of having his attractive villa residences left empty
on his hands. No; new houses are built to order, if at all. In the
same way, it is rare to find a fresh shop spring into being in a small
village, and should it happen, in all probability a year or two will
see the shutters up and the disgruntled proprietor departing in search
of pastures new. For the villagers who have always dealt with the
local butcher, baker, and grocer, and whose fathers have probably dealt
with their fathers before them, are not easily to be cajoled into
transferring their custom--and certainly not to the establishment of
any one who has had the misfortune to be born outside the confines of
the county, and is therefore to be briefly summed up in the one damning
word "vurriner." [1]

So that Diana, returning to Crailing for a brief holiday after a year's
absence, found the tiny fishing village quite unchanged, and this fact
imparted an air almost of unreality to the twelve busy, eventful months
which had intervened. She felt as if she had never been away, as
though the Diana Quentin who had been living in London and studying
singing under the greatest master of the day were some one quite apart
from the girl who had passed so many quiet, happy years at Crailing
Rectory.

The new and unaccustomed student's life, the two golden visits which
she had paid to Italy, the introduction into a milieu of clever, gifted
people all struggling to make the most of their talents, had been such
an immense change from the placid, humdrum existence which had preceded
it, that it still held for her an almost dreamlike charm of novelty,
and this was intensified at the present moment by her return to
Crailing to find everything going on just in the same old way,
precisely as though there had been no break at all.

As though to convince herself that the student life in London was a
substantial reality, and not a mere figment of the imagination, she
hummed a few bars of a song, and as she listened to the deep, rich
notes of her voice, poised with that sureness which only comes of
first-class training, she smiled a little, reflecting that if nothing
else had changed, here at least was a palpable outcome of that
dreamlike year.

"Bravo!" The Rector's cheery tones broke in upon her thoughts as he
came out from a neighbouring gateway and swung himself up into the