unpacked his trunk and took from it a Norfolk jacket suit
and stockings, changed, and, leaving his luggage with his landlady, who
was to obey further instructions as to its disposal, marched buoyantly
away through the sun-filled streets of the little town, stick in hand,
gripsack on shoulder, and the unquenchable fire of youth and hope in
his heart.

CHAPTER VIII

MISS URSULA WINWOOD, hatless, but with a cotton sunshade swinging over
her shoulder, and with a lean, shiny, mahogany-coloured Sussex spaniel
trailing behind, walked in her calm, deliberate way down the long
carriage drive of Drane's Court. She was stout and florid, and had no
scruples as to the avowal of her age, which was forty-three. She had
clear blue eyes which looked steadily upon a complicated world of
affairs, and a square, heavy chin which showed her capacity for dealing
with it. Miss Ursula Winwood knew herself to be a notable person, and
the knowledge did not make her vain or crotchety or imperious. She took
her notability for granted, as she took her mature good looks and her
independent fortune. For some years she had kept house for her widowed
brother, Colonel Winwood, Conservative Member for the Division of the
county in which they resided, and helped him efficiently in his
political work. The little township of Morebury--half a mile from the
great gates of Drane's Court--felt Miss Winwood's control in diverse
ways. Another town, a little further off, with five or six millions of
inhabitants, was also, through its newspapers, aware of Miss Winwood.
Many leagues, societies, associations, claimed her as President,
Vice-President, or Member of Council. She had sat on Royal Commissions.
Her name under an appeal for charity guaranteed the deserts of the
beneficiaries. What she did not know about housing problems, factory
acts, female prisons, hospitals, asylums for the blind, decayed
gentlewomen, sweated trades, dogs' homes and Friendly Societies could
not be considered in the light of knowledge. She sat on platforms with
Royal princesses, Archbishops welcomed her as a colleague, and Cabinet
Ministers sought her counsel.

For some distance from the porch of the red-brick, creeper-covered
Queen-Anne house the gravel drive between the lawns blazed in the
afternoon sun. For this reason, the sunshade. But after a while came an
avenue of beech and plane and oak casting delectable shade on the drive
and its double edging of grass, and the far-stret