here prescriptions are most carefully made up. "You ought to take an
interest in the home of our ancestors as I do."

"I've tried for a week, Mrs. Shonts," said Sophie, "but I never get any
further than tipping German waiters."

"These men are not the true type," Mrs. Shouts went on. "I know where
you should go."

Chapin pricked up his ears, anxious to run anywhere from the streets
on which quick men, something of his kidney, did the business denied to
him.

"We hear and we obey, Mrs. Shonts," said Sophie, feeling his unrest as
he drank the loathed British tea.

Mrs. Shonts smiled, and took them in hand. She wrote widely and
telegraphed far on their behalf till, armed with her letter of
introduction, she drove them into that wilderness which is reached from
an ash-barrel of a station called Charing Cross. They were to go to
Rockett's--the farm of one Cloke, in the southern counties--where, she
assured them, they would meet the genuine England of folklore and song.

Rocketts they found after some hours, four miles from a station, and,
so far as they could, judge in the bumpy darkness, twice as many from a
road. Trees, kine, and the outlines of barns showed shadowy about them
when they alighted, and Mr. and Mrs. Cloke, at the open door of a deep
stone-floored kitchen, made them shyly welcome. They lay in an attic
beneath a wavy whitewashed ceiling, and, because it rained, a wood fire
was made in an iron basket on a brick hearth, and they fell asleep to
the chirping of mice and the whimper of flames.

When they woke it was a fair day, full of the noises, of birds, the
smell of box lavender, and fried bacon, mixed with an elemental smell
they had never met before.

"This," said Sophie, nearly pushing out the thin casement in an attempt
to see round the corner, "is--what did the hack-cabman say to the
railway porter about my trunk--'quite on the top?'"

"No; 'a little bit of all right.' I feel farther away from anywhere than
I've ever felt in my life. We must find out where the telegraph office
is."

"Who cares?" said Sophie, wandering about, hairbrush in hand, to admire
the illustrated weekly pictures pasted on door and cupboard.

But there was no rest for the alien soul till he had made sure of the
telegraph office. He asked the Clokes' daughter, laying breakfast, while
Sophie plunged her face in the lavender bush outside the low window.

"Go to the stile a-top o' the Barn field," said Mary, "and look across