with a small walled garden in front of it; not a large house, but one
full of character and of quiet self-assurance. Malletts had lived in
it for several generations, long before the opposite houses were
built, long before the road had, lower down, degenerated into a region
of shops. These houses, all rechristened in a day of enthusiasm,
Nelson Lodge, with Trafalgar House, taller, bigger, but not so white,
on one side of it, and Hardy Cottage, somewhat smaller, on the other,
had faced open meadows in General Mallett's boyhood. Round the corner,
facing The Green, were a few contemporaries, and they all had a slight
look of disdain for the later comers, yet no single house was
flagrantly new. There was not a villa in sight and on The Green two
old stone monuments, to long-dead and long-forgotten warriors, kept
company with the old trees under which children were now playing,
while nurses wheeled perambulators on the bisecting paths. The Green
itself sloped upwards until it became a flat-topped hill, once a
British or a Roman camp, and thence the river could be seen between
its rocky cliffs and the woods Rose had lately skirted clothing the
farther side in every shade of green.

She lingered for a moment to watch the children playing, the
nursemaids slowly pushing, the elms opening their crumpled leaves like
babies' hands. She had a momentary desire to stay, to wander round the
hill and look with untired eyes at the familiar scene; but she passed
on under the tyranny of tea. The Malletts were always in time for
meals and the meals were exquisite, like the polish on the old brass
door-knocker, like the furniture in the white panelled hall, like the
beautiful old mahogany in the drawing-room, the old china, the glass
bowls full of flowers.

Rose found Caroline and Sophia there on either side of a small wood