CHAPTER VI

MRS. BUTT'S DEPARTURE


James Ollerenshaw's house was within a few hundred yards of the top of
Trafalgar-road, on the way from Bursley to Hanbridge. I may not indicate
the exact house, but I can scarcely conceal that it lay between Nos. 160
and 180, on the left as you go up. It was one of the oldest houses in
the street, and though bullied into insignificance by sundry detached
and semi-detached villas opposite--palaces occupied by reckless persons
who think nothing of paying sixty or even sixty-five pounds a year for
rent alone--it kept a certain individuality and distinction because it
had been conscientiously built of good brick before English domestic
architecture had lost trace of the Georgian style. First you went up two
white steps (white in theory), through a little gate in a wrought-iron
railing painted the colour of peas after they have been cooked in a bad
restaurant. You then found yourself in a little front yard, twelve feet
in width (the whole width of the house) by six feet in depth. The yard
was paved with large square Indian-red tiles, except a tiny circle in
the midst bordered with black-currant-coloured tiles set endwise with a
scolloped edge. This magical circle contained earth, and in the centre
of it was a rhododendron bush which, having fallen into lazy habits, had
forgotten the art of flowering. Its leaves were a most pessimistic
version of the tint of the railing.