old fashioned gardens you and i but it s all over the mistress of the is coming home � and i m positively certain � yes old boy � positively certain that we shall both her in hen england s great queen victoria the good was still enjoying her first happy years of wedded life and society under her gentle sway was less and much more sincere in its code of than it is nowadays the village of st together with the adjacent post town of enjoyed considerable importance in county very great county personages were daily to be seen themselves quite simply among their own and the hunt ball gathered together a veritable of fair women and brave men who loved their homes better than all the and movement of town and who possessed for the most part that sweet content which gives strength to the body and to the mind there was then a natural gaiety and spontaneous cheerfulness in english country life that made such a life good for human happiness and the jolly who with their kept open house and celebrated harvest home and christmas festival with all the and vigour of a sane and manhood by any sickly taint of morbid and indifferent were the beneficent rulers of a rural population than has ever been seen since their day squire the elder grandfather of the present of s had been a splendid specimen of the fine old english gentleman all of the time and his wife one of the as well as one of tl ie kindest hearted women that ever lived had been justly proud of her husband devoted to her children and a true friend and to the neighbourhood her four sons two of whom were all great lads built on their vigorous father s model were considered the best looking young men in the county and by their fond mother were judged as the best hearted but as it often happens nature was in their regard and turned them all out wild of a breed than might have been expected from their the eldest took to hard drinking and was killed at chasing the second god s good man was drowned while bathing one of the named the younger by a few minutes after nearly falling into depths of degradation by gambling with certain noble and exalted personages of renown saved himself as it were by the skin of his teeth through marriage with a rich american girl whose father was blessed with unlimited oil mines he was thereby enabled to in wealth with an and shattered nervous power while capricious fate played him her usual trick in her usual way by denying him any to his married millions his brother wedded for love and chose as his mate a beautiful girl without a penny whose grace and charm had dazzled the london world of fashion for about two seasons and she had died at the age of twenty in giving birth to her first child the girl whom her father had named all these chances and changes of life however to the leading family of the neighbourhood had left very little mark on st which under the light shadow of the eastern hills by its clear flowing river very much as it had always in the old days and very much as it would always do even if london and paris were consumed by the memory of the first old squire � who died peacefully in his bed all alone his wife having passed away two years before him and his two living twin sons being absent � was frequently mixed with stories of the other old squire robert the elder twin who was killed in the hunting field � and indeed it often happened that some of the more ancient and villagers were not at all sure as to which was which the had been shut up for ten years � the family had not been heard of during all that period and the s recollection of their late landlord as well as of his one daughter was more vague and confused than the place had been managed and the cottage rents collected by the detested agent a fact which did not such remembrance of the as still existed in the minds of the people however nothing in the general aspect and mental attitude of the village had altered very much since the early except the church that from a mere ruin had under john s become a of architecture so unique and perfect as to be the wonder and admiration of all who beheld it and whereas in the early reign a few people stopped at because it was a county town and because there was an inn there where they could put up their god s good man so a few people now went to st best because there was a there worth looking at they came by train to where the railway line stopped and then took carriage or the seven miles between that town and st rest to see the church and having seen it promptly went back again for one of the great charms of the little village hidden under the hills was that no could stay a night in it unless he or she took one spare room � there was only one � at the small public house which away up round a comer of the street under an of ivy and pushed its old through the dark leaves with a half air as though somewhat ashamed of its own existence with the exception of this one room in this one public house there was no accommodation for visitors never will the rash who ventured once to appeal to the s wife for rooms in her cottage forget e of his reception rooms and mrs frost setting her arms well surveyed the scornfully through an open doorway rendered doubly inviting by the wealth 