John Menzies Grant, having breakfasted, filled his pipe, lit it, and
strolled out bare-headed into the garden. The month was June, that
glorious rose-month which gladdened England before war-clouds darkened
the summer sky. As the hour was nine o'clock, it is highly probable that
many thousands of men were then strolling out into many thousands of
gardens in precisely similar conditions; but, given youth, good health,
leisure, and a fair amount of money, it is even more probable that few
among the smaller number thus roundly favored by fortune looked so
perplexed as Grant.

Moreover, his actions were eloquent as words. A spacious French window
had been cut bodily out of the wall of an old-fashioned room, and was now
thrown wide to admit the flower-scented breeze. Between this window and
the right-hand angle of the room was a smaller window, square-paned, high
above the ground level, and deeply recessed--in fact just the sort of
window which one might expect to find in a farm-house built two centuries
ago, when light and air were rigorously excluded from interiors. The two
windows told the history of The Hollies at a glance. The little one had
served the needs of a "best" room for several generations of Sussex
yeomen. Then had come some iconoclast who hewed a big rectangle through
the solid stone-work, converted the oak-panelled apartment into a most
comfortable dining-room, built a new wing with a gable, changed a
farm-yard into a flower-bordered lawn, and generally played havoc with
Georgian utility while carrying out a determined scheme of landscape
gardening.

Happily, the wrecker was content to let well enough alone after enlarging
the house, laying turf, and planting shrubs and flowers. He found The
Hollies a ramshackle place, and left it even more so, but with a new note
of artistry and several unexpectedly charming vistas. Thus, the big