Religious, pious, thrifty, wise, fayre, and chast:
Soe many goods in one, who finds in hast?"

One more name attracts. Mehetabel, daughter of John Leech of Lea, died
in 1816. She was doubtless a friend of Cobbett, who often rode by Lea,
and greatly admired her father's trees. The first Mehetabel was the wife
of the king of Edom, and the last, possibly, is the heroine of the
_Broom Squire_.

Witley has perhaps been a little overshadowed by the tragedy of a late
owner of Lea Park. I have heard descriptions of the new features of Lea
Park, the lakes and fountains and a billiard-room, I believe, under
water, but I have not seen them.

Before Hindhead drew authors and artists up the hill, Witley had its own
settlement of workers living deep in Surrey country. George Eliot was at
Witley Heights; J.C. Hook, who could not bear to be watched while he was
painting, sketched Witley gorse and heather; Birket Foster long lived
among the Witley pines; and Mrs. Allingham, who was at Sandhills, a
house near by, has painted few more interesting pictures than her
_Lessons_, _Pat-a-cake_, and _The Children's Tea_. At Witley she
painted most of her studies of children indoors, in the nursery and the
schoolroom; after she left Witley, she liked to set her cottage girls
and boys among bluebells and apple-blossom out of doors.

[Illustration: _A corner in the White Hart, Witley, known as George
Eliot's corner._]

CHAPTER XIV

THE FOLD COUNTRY

The Wild Garden of Surrey.--Birds and their
valentines.--Nightingales at Dunsfold.--Alfold Stocks.--Three yews
in a line.--The King's Evil.--Alfold industries.--A dry
canal.--Chiddingfold.--Red brick and Madonna lilies.--The
Enticknaps.--Hungry scholars.--The Crown Inn.--On Highdown Ball.--A
green ride in the woods.--The Chiddingfold Foxhounds.

The "Fold Country" is the wild garden of the Surrey weald, and the month
to walk in it is May. Alfold, Ifold, Durfold, Dunsfold, Chiddingfold,
and other "folds" lie among oakwoods and ploughlands that once were
oakwoods; the railway runs nowhere nearer than seven miles from the
heart of the woods, and in the woods the timbered cottages stand apart,
old and tranquil. To me, the associations of the "Fold Country" centre
round the memory of a First of May hotter and more glorious with flowers
than any I can remember. I had started to walk from Baynards Station
west among the woods, with the recollection of four days