and there was a lovely
little organ built by Willis, with a _vox humana_ stop in it, that
was like the most pathetic sheep that ever bleated to its lamb. The
church and the red tiled schoolhouse stood upon a delightful green
common, covered with gorse bushes. There were trees all over the place,
and the birds always sang in them. Roses bloomed in the neat little
cottage gardens, and cheery, rosy children played happily about in the
light sandy roads. Nothing, in fact, was wanting to make up a pretty
picture of complete and English rusticity.

But Mrs. Windsor's cottage was the most charming picture of all. It was
really a rambling thatched bungalow, with wide verandas trellised with
dog roses, and a demure cosy garden full of velvet lawns and yew hedges
cut into monstrous shapes. A tiny drive led up to the wide porch, and a
neat green gate guarded the drive from the country road, beyond which
there stood a regular George Morland village pond, a pond with muddy
water, and fat geese, and ducks standing on their heads, and great sleek
cart-horses pausing knee-deep to drink, with velvety distended nostrils,
and, in fact, all the proper pond accessories. A little way up the road
stood the curate's neat red house, and beyond that the village
post-office and grocery store. Further away still were the substantial
rectory, the model cottages, the common, the church, and schoolhouse.
Behind the bungalow, which was called "The Retreat," there was a
farmyard in which hens laid eggs for the bungalow breakfast table, and
black Berkshire pigs slowly ripened and matured in the bright June
sunshine. A stone sun-dial stood upon one of the velvet lawns, engraved
with the legend "Tempus fugit," and various creaking basket and beehive
chairs stood about, while no tennis net was permitted to desecrate the
appearance of complete repose that the green garden presented to the
tired town eye.

Mrs. Windsor declared that her guests must be content to rough it during
the Surrey week; but as she took down with her from London a French chef
and a couple of tall footmen, a carriage and pair, a governess cart, a
fat white pony, a coachman and various housemaids, the guests regarded
that dismal prospect with a fair amount of equanimity, and were assailed
by none of those fears that appal the wanderer who arrives at a country
inn or at a small lodging by the seaside. It may be pleasant to have
roughed it, but it is always tiresome to be plunged in a fr