nnkeeper--also out of Dickens--resembling the elder Weller--a
local magnate called Tom Brill, who looked a relic of the coaching days,
though really he never did anything but stand in front of the inn in
his shirt-sleeves and welcome people.

Vaughan, obviously an habitue, walked through the inn into a perfectly
adorable garden, which was so large, so quiet, and so full of pinks,
hollyhocks, and other old-fashioned flowers, so absolutely peaceful and
sleepy, that one could have imagined oneself miles away in the country.

The garden belonged as much to the Dickens period as the inn itself. It
contained a great many wooden arbours in which one could imagine ladies
in crinolines archly accepting tea, or refusing sips of shrub (whatever
that may be) with whiskered gentlemen. There was a large cage full of
Persian pheasants with gorgeous Indian colouring, which always suggested
to Vaughan--he didn't know why--the Crimean War. There was a parlour
covered with coloured prints of racehorses and boxing matches, and in
which was a little round table painted as a draught-board, and furnished
with a set of Indian chessmen of red and white ivory. The whole thing,
though only twenty minutes' drive from Mayfair, was unknown, unspoilt,
and apparently had not altered in any particular since about 1856. Its
great charm was that it was utterly unself-conscious; it had no idea
that it was quaint.

Vaughan sat down on a rustic seat and plunged into the atmosphere of the
period that he loved, revelling in the soothing, delightful calm, and in
the fact that nobody there knew who he was (though they knew him well by
name), and that none of his friends and acquaintances would have dreamt
that he was there.

A large field beyond the garden contained cows, hay, and other rustic
things.

Presently Tom Brill came up to him, and he asked after Mrs. Brill, whom
her husband always described, with confidential pride, as "Though I say
it that shouldn't say it, as fine a woman as you'll meet in a day's
march."

Vaughan always assented to this proposition. As he had never himself in
his life been for a day's march, and probably never would, he certainly
would have had no right to contradict Mr. Brill on the subject.

"Is Miss Brill at home?" he presently asked. "May I see her?"

"Certainly, sir, of course you shall. She's helping her mother. I'll
call her. Don't move, sir, don't move."

Miss Brill, who had been helping her mother to look out of