all at an end--and bought it just in time to save it from such
degradation.

This somebody repaired and restored it to a certain extent, and then
sold it again. The new owner enlarged and improved it, and built the
high wall which now looked so venerable; for already this was many, many
years ago. The present owner of Robin Redbreast was the daughter of this
gentleman--or nobleman rather--and she had lived in it ever since the
death of her husband, fully twenty years ago.

She was an old woman now. Her name was Lady Myrtle Goodacre. The
Goodacres, her husband's family, belonged to a distant county, and when
_her_ Mr Goodacre died, her connection with his part of the country
seemed to cease, for she had no children, and her thoughts turned to the
neighbourhood of her own old home, and the pretty quaint house not very
far from it, which had been left her by her father, the late earl. And
thither she came. But she was not exactly a sociable old lady, and few
of the Thetford people knew her. So that there grew to be a slight
flavour of mystery about Robin Redbreast.

The lane was about three-quarters of a mile from the little town of
Thetford. Not that it was a little town in its own estimation; like
many small things, it thought itself decidedly important. It was a
pleasant, healthy place, and of late years it had wakened up a good deal
in some directions, of which education was one, so that several families
with boys and girls in want of schooling came and settled there. For the
grammar-school was now prospering under an excellent and energetic
head-master, and there was talk of a high-school for girls.

But this latter institution was still in the clouds or the air, and so
far, the girls of Thetford families had to content themselves with the
teaching to be obtained at two steady-going, somewhat old-fashioned
private schools, of which the respective heads were, oddly enough, the
Misses Scarlett and the Misses Green. There were three Misses Scarlett
and two Misses Green (I fear they were more often described as 'The Miss
Scarletts' and 'The Miss Greens'), and all five were ladies of most
estimable character.

There was no rivalry between the two schools. Each had and held its own
place and line. Ivy Lodge and Brook Bank were perfectly distinct, so
distinct that neither trod on the other's toes. The former, that
presided over by the Scarlett sisters, was recognisedly for the
daughters of the Thetford upper ten thousa