ly in the middle of the road, so that we couldn't pass
them. Dick kept longing to "pot" at the poor little pets, but Sir Lionel
said he had lived out of England long enough to find a good deal of
pleasure in life without taking that of any other creature. That isn't a
very dragonish sentiment, is it?

Next day we had a delicious run (there's no other adjective which quite
expresses it) through Ringwood, which is a door of the Forest, to
Christchurch, another Abbey--(no, it's a Priory; but to me that's a
detail) which stands looking at its own beauty in a crystal mirror. It's
Augustan, not Cistercian, like Beaulieu; and it's august, as well; very
noble; finer to see than many a cathedral. You and I, in other lands,
have industriously travelled many miles to visit churches without half
as many "features" as Christchurch. One of its quaintest is a leper's
window; and a few of the beauties are the north transept, with unique
"hatchet" ornamentation; a choir with wonderful old oak carvings--and
the tomb of the Countess of Salisbury, of whom you read aloud to me when
I was small, in a book called "Some Heroines of History." She came last
in the volume because she was only a countess, and not a queen, but I
cried when she said she didn't mind being killed, only being touched by
a horrid, common axe, and wanted them to cut off her head with a sword.
There are lots of other beautiful things in the church, too, and a nice
legend about an oak beam which grew long in the night, and building
materials which came down from a hill of their own accord, because one
of the builders was Christ himself. That's why they named it
Christchurch, you see, instead of Twyneham, as it would otherwise have
been.

We stopped only long enough, after we had seen the Priory, to pay our
respects to a splendid old Norman house near by, and then dashed away
toward Boscombe and Bournemouth, which reminded me a little of
Baden-Baden, with its gardens and fountains and running waters; its
charming trees and exciting-looking shops. Just because it's modern, we
didn't pause, but swept on, through scenery which suddenly degenerated.
However, as I heard Sir Lionel say to Mrs. Senter: "You can't go far in
this country without finding beauty"; and presently she was her own
lovely self again, fair as Nature intended her to be. I mean England,
not Mrs. Senter, who is lovelier than Nature made her.

We ran through miles of dense pine forests, where rhododendrons gr