slatternly houses there were sometimes spars and rigging so strange
and bygone that they suggested Drake and the Spanish main.

Southwick is half a suburb, half a village. In the summer months the
green seems a living thing. It is there the children talk and tumble
when school is over. They are told to go to the green, they are
forbidden to go to the green, and it is from the green the eldest girl
leads the naughty boy howling. When they are a little older they avoid
the green, it is too public then. It is to the green that elevens come
from far and near to play their matches. All the summer through the
green is a _fete_ of cricket. It is to the green the brass bands come
on Saturday. On the green, bat and trap is played till the ball
disappears in shadow. The green is common; horses and cows are turned
out there. All profit by the green. It is on the edge of the green the
housewives come to talk in the limpid moonlight. It is on the green
the fathers smoke when the little cottage rooms are unbearable with
summer heat. It is on the green that Mrs. Horlock walks with her pugs
and the chemist's wife, to the enormous scandal of the neighbourhood.

To the right, facing the embankment, and overlooking some fields, is
the famous Southdown road, and parallel with the green is Mr.
Brookes's property--a solid five acres, with all modern improvements
and embellishments, and surrounded by a brick wall over six feet high.

Willy hated Southwick. He thought it ugly and vulgar; he regretted
deeply that his father would make no advances, and that they were as
far from county society to-day as when they came to live in the place
thirty years ago. "I knew the best people when I was at Oxford, why
can I not know them now? Here we are doing the same thing from year's
end to year's end; why, with our money we ought to be hob-nobbing with