s End--

Misfortunes--whence he shall not know--
Shall fall on him like noiseless snow,
And all his steps attend.

Peace be upon this house; and all
That dwell therein good luck befall,
That do the wrens befriend.

Charles Considine Smith faithfully kept to his agreement regarding the
protection of the wrens, and much later wrote a series of articles upon
their habits, which appeared in the _North Cotswold Herald_. He seems to
have been on friendly terms with Solomon Page, who, having inherited a
larger property in the next county, removed thence when he sold Wren's
End.

In 1824 Smith married Tranquil Page, daughter of Solomon. She was then
thirty-seven years old, and, according to one of her husband's diaries,
"a staid person like myself." She was twenty years younger than her
husband and bore him one child, a daughter also named Tranquil.

She, however, appears to have been less staid than her parents, for she
ran away before she was twenty with a Scottish advocate called James
Ross.

The Smiths evidently forgave the wilful Tranquil, for, on the death of
Charles, she and her husband left Scotland and settled with her mother
at Wren's End. She had two children, Janet, the great-aunt who left Jan
Wren's End, and James, Jan's grandfather, who was sent to Edinburgh for
his education, and afterwards became a Writer to the Signet. He married
and settled in Edinburgh, preferring Scotland to England, and it was
with his knowledge and consent that Wren's End was left to his sister
Janet.

Janet never married. She was energetic, prudent, and masterful, having
an excellent head for business. She was kind to her nephews and nieces
in a domineering sort of way, and had always a soft place in her heart
for Anthony, though she regarded him as more or less of a scatter-brain.
When she was nearly eighty she commanded his little girls to visit her.
Jan was then fourteen and Fay eleven. She liked them because they had
good manners and were neither of them in the least afraid of her. And at
her death, six years later, she left Wren's End to Jan absolutely--as it
stood; but she left her money to Anthony's elder brother, who had a
large family and was not particularly well off.

That year was a good artistic year for Anthony, and he spent over five
hundred pounds in--as he put it--"making Jan's house habitable."

This proved not a bad investment, for they had let it every winter since
to Colonel Walcot