e
couldn't be a lovelier one.

From Beaulieu we went to Lymington, a quaint and ancient town, with a
picturesque port. Everything there looked happy and sleepy, except the
postillions on the Bournemouth coach, which was stopping at the hotel
where we had an early lunch. They were wide awake and jolly, under their
old-fashioned, broad-brimmed beaver hats.

After Lymington, we skimmed through the Forest, hardly knowing or caring
whither, though we did manage to find Brockenhurst, and Mark Ash, which
was almost the finest of all with its glorious trees. Our one wish was
to avoid highways, and Sir Lionel was clever about that. The sweetest
bit was a mere by-path, hardly to be called a road, though the surface
was superb. Young Nick had to get down and open a gate, which led into
what seemed a private place, and no one who hadn't been told to go that
way would have thought of it. On the other side of the gate it was just
another part of forest fairyland, whose inhabitants turned themselves
into trees as we, in our motor-car, intruded on them. I never saw such
extraordinary imitations of the evergreen family as they contrived on
the spur of the moment. It was a glamorous wood, and throughout the
whole forest I had more and more the feeling that England isn't so small
as it's painted. There are such vast spaces not lived in at all, yet
haunted with legend and history. One place we passed--hardly a place, it
was so small--was called Tyrrel's Ford; and there Sir Walter Tyrrel is
said to have stopped to have his horse's shoes reversed by a blacksmith,
on his flight to the sea, after killing the Red King. Or no, now I
remember, this was next day, between Ringwood and Christchurch!

When we were having tea at Lyndhurst on our way back, at a hotel like a
country house in a great garden, we found out that it once had been the
home of your forty-second cousin, the Duc de Stacpoole, who came to
England with Louis Philippe. There's his beautiful tapestry, to this
day, in the dining-room, and his gorgeous magnolia tree looking
wistfully into the window, as if asking why he isn't there to admire its
creamy flowers, big as fat snowballs.

On our way home the rabbits of the New Forest were having a party, and
were annoyed with us for coming to it without invitations. They kept
"crossing our path," as people in melodramas say, so that we had to go
slowly, not to run over them, and sometimes they galloped ahead, just in
front of us, exact