design of old Verulam: and Yvonne of the Castle loved its little
turrets and cages of singing birds, and its alleys paved with
burnet, wild thyme, and watermints, which perfume the air most
delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon
and crushed.

Wanhope also, though modest by comparison, had a good deal of
land attached to it, but the Clowes property lay north up the
Plain, where they sowed the headlands with red wheat still as
in the days of Justice Shallow. The shining Mere, a tributary
of the Avon, came dancing down out of these hills: strange
pastoral cliffs of chalk covered with fine sward, and worked by
the hands of prehistoric man into bastions and ramparts that
imitated in verdure the bold sweep of masonry.

Mr. Stafford was a man of sixty, white-haired and of sensitive,
intelligent features. He was a High Churchman, but wore a felt
wideawake in winter because when he bought it wideawakes were
the fashion for High Churchmen. In the summer he usually roved
about his parish without any hat at all, his white curls flying
in the wind. He was of gentle birth, which tended to ease his
intercourse with the Castle. He had a hundred a year of his own,
and the living of Chilmark was worth 175 pounds net. So it may
have been partly from necessity that he went about in clothes at
which any respectable tramp would have turned his nose up: but
idiosyncrasy alone can have inspired him to get the village tailor
to line his short blue pilot jacket with pink flannelette. "It's
very warm and comfortable, my dear," he said apologetically to his
wife, who sat and gazed at him aghast, "so much more cosy than
Italian cloth."