hand of the early Victorian speculative builder; who, in their stead, has
erected full complement of the architectural platitudes common to his age
and taste. Dignity has very sensibly given place to gentility.
Nevertheless the timid red, or sickly yellow-grey, brick of the existing
houses is pleasingly veiled by ivy and Virginia creeper, while no shop
front obtrudes derogatory suggestion of retail trade. The local
authorities, moreover, some ten years back girdled the Green with healthy
young balsam-poplar and plane trees and enclosed the grass with iron
hurdles--to rescue it from trampling into unsightly pathways--thus doing
a well-intentioned, if somewhat unimaginative, best to safeguard the
theatre of long ago Trimmer's beneficence or infamy from greater
spoliation.

Hence it follows that, certain inherent limitations admitted, the scene
upon which Dominic Iglesias' eyes rested was not without elements of
attraction. And of this fact, being a person of an excellent temperance
of expectation, he was gratefully aware. His surroundings, indeed,
constituted, so it appeared to him, the maximum of comfort and advantage
which could be expected by a middle-aged gentleman, of moderate fortune,
in the capacity of a "paying guest." Not only in word but in thought--for
in acknowledgment of obligation he was scrupulously courteous. He
frequently tendered thanks to his neighbour and old school-fellow, Mr.
George Lovegrove, first for calling his attention to Mrs. Porcher's
advertisement, and subsequently for reassuring him as to its import. For,
though incapable of forming so much as a thought to her concrete
disparagement, Mr. Iglesias was not without a quiet sense of humour, or
of that instinct of self-protection common to even the most chivalrous of
mankind. He was, therefore, perfectly sensible that "the widow of a
military officer," who describes herself in print as "bright, musical and
thoroughly domesticated," while offering "a cheerful and refined home at