I offered them the freedom of the place at my expense.

I never purchased more radiant good-will for less money, but the combined
effect of the well-boiled tea and the boiling orchestrion produced many
village nightmares, so the mothers told me at chapel next morning.

* * *

I have many friends in Barbury Green, and often have a pleasant chat with
the draper, and the watchmaker, and the chemist.

The last house on the principal street is rather an ugly one, with
especially nice window curtains. As I was taking my daily walk to the
post-office (an entirely unfruitful expedition thus far, as nobody has
taken the pains to write to me) I saw a nursemaid coming out of the gate,
wheeling a baby in a perambulator. She was going placidly away from the
Green when, far in the distance, she espied a man walking rapidly toward
us, a heavy Gladstone bag in one hand. She gazed fixedly for a moment,
her eyes brightening and her cheeks flushing with pleasure,--whoever it
was, it was an unexpected arrival;--then she retraced her steps and,
running up the garden-path, opened the front door and held an excited
colloquy with somebody; a slender somebody in a nice print gown and
neatly-dressed hair, who came to the gate and peeped beyond the hedge
several times, drawing back between peeps with smiles and heightened
colour. She did not run down the road, even when she had satisfied
herself of the identity of the traveller; perhaps that would not have
been good form in an English village, for there were houses on the
opposite side of the way. She waited until he opened the gate, the
nursemaid took the bag and looked discreetly into the hedge, then the
mistress slipped her hand through the traveller's arm and walked up the