of fair proportions, appeared close. His thought refused the limits of
it, and ranged outward over the expanse of Trimmer's Green, the roadway
and houses bordering it, to the far northwest, that region of hurried
storm, of fierce, equinoctial passion and conflict, now paved with
plaques of flat, dingy, violet cloud opening on smoky rose-red wastes of
London sunset. All day thunder had threatened, but had not broken. And,
even yet, the face of heaven seemed less peaceful than remonstrant, a
sullenness holding it as of troops in retreat denied satisfaction of
imminent battle.

Otherwise the outlook was wholly pacific, one of middle-class suburban
security. The Green aforesaid is bottle-shaped, the neck of it debouching
into a crowded westward-wending thoroughfare; while Cedar Lodge, from the
first-floor windows of which Mr. Iglesias contemplated the oncoming of
night, being situate in the left shoulder, so to speak, of the bottle,
commanded, diagonally, an uninterrupted view of the whole extent of it.
Who Trimmer was, how he came by a Green, and why, or what he trimmed on
it, it is idle at this time of day to attempt to determine. Whether,
animated by a desire for the public welfare, he bequeathed it in high
charitable sort; or whether, fame taking a less enviable turn with him,
he just simply was hanged there, has afforded matter of heated
controversy to the curious in questions of suburban nomenclature and
topography. But in this case, as in so many other and more august ones,
the origins defy discovery. Suffice it, therefore, that the name remains,
as does the open space--the latter forming one of those minor "lungs of
London" which offer such amiable oases in the great city's less
aristocratic residential districts. Formerly the Green boasted a row of
fine elms, and was looked on by discreetly handsome eighteenth-century
mansions and villas, set in spacious gardens. But of these, the great
majority--Cedar Lodge being a happy exception--has vanished under the