guests, those who look as if they would appreciate the quietude of the
plyce and be willing as you might say to remunerate according."

I did not mind at this particular juncture what I was called, so long as
the epithet was comparatively unobjectionable, so I am a paying guest,
therefore, and I expect to pay handsomely for the handsome appellation.
Mrs. Heaven is short and fat; she fills her dress as a pin-cushion fills
its cover; she wears a cap and apron, and she is so full of platitudes
that she would have burst had I not appeared as a providential outlet for
them. Her accent is not of the farm, but of the town, and smacks wholly
of the marts of trade. She is repetitious, too, as well as
platitudinous. "I 'ope if there's anythink you require you will let us
know, let us know," she says several times each day; and whenever she
enters my sitting-room she prefaces her conversation with the remark: "I
trust you are finding it quiet here, miss? It's the quietude of the
plyce that is its charm, yes, the quietude. And yet" (she dribbles on)
"it wears on a body after a while, miss. I often go into Woodmucket to
visit one of my sons just for the noise, simply for the noise, miss, for
nothink else in the world but the noise. There's nothink like noise for
soothing nerves that is worn threadbare with the quietude, miss, or at
least that's my experience; and yet to a strynger the quietude of the
plyce is its charm, undoubtedly its chief charm; and that is what our
paying guests always say, although our charges are somewhat higher than
other plyces. If there's anythink you require, miss, I 'ope you'll
mention it. There is not a commodious assortment in Barbury Green, but
we can always send the pony to Woodmucket in case of urgency. Our paying
guest last summer was a Mrs. Pollock, and she was by way of having sudden
fancies. Young and unmarried though you are, miss, I think you will tyke
my meaning without my speaking plyner? Well, at six o'clock of a rainy
afternoon, she was seized with an unaccountable desire for vegetable