nerveless and shrunken feeler which, a mile beyond Chovensbury, it
extended in Penny Green's direction.

This splendid main road in the course of its immense journey across
Southern England, extended feelers to many settlements of man,
providing them as it were with a talent which, according to the energy
of the settlement, might be increased a hundredfold--drained, metalled,
tarred, and adorned with splendid telegraph poles and wires--or might be
wrapped up in a napkin of neglect, monstrous overgrown hedges and
decayed ditches, and allowed to wither: the splendid main road, having
regard to its ancient Roman lineage, disdainfully did not care tuppence
either way; and for that matter Penny Green, which had ages ago put its
feeler in a napkin, did not care tuppence either.

It was now, however, to have a railway.

And meanwhile there was this to be said for it: that whereas some of the
dependents of the splendid main road constituted themselves abominably
ugly carbuncles on the end of shapely and well-manicured fingers of the
main road, Penny Green, at the end of a withered and entirely neglected
finger, adorned it as with a jewel.


III

A Kate Greenaway picture, the garrulous Hapgood had said of Penny Green;
and it was well said. At its eastern extremity the withered talent from
the splendid main road divided into two talents and encircled the Green
which had, as Hapgood had said, a cricket pitch (in summer) and a duck
pond (more prominent in winter); also, in all seasons, and the survivors