us at the station and whirled us through the
busy town and along the straight dusty road beyond it. As we drove along
in the soft clouded sunshine I looked over the hedges on either side,
and I could see fields and hedgerows and red roofs clustering here
and there, while the low background of blue hills spread towards the
horizon. It was an unpretentious homely prospect intercepted each minute
by the detestable advertisement hoardings recommending this or that
rival pill. 'Tongues in trees' indeed, in a very different sense from
the exiled duke's experience! Then we come within sight of the running
brook, uncontaminated as yet; the river flowing cool and swift, without
quack medicines stamped upon its waters: we reach Whitley presently,
with its pretty gabled hostel (Mrs. Mitford used to drive to Whitley and
back for her airing), the dust rises on the fresh keen wind, the scent
of the ripe corn is in the air, the cows stoop under the elm trees,
looking exactly as they do in Mr. Thomson's pretty pictures, dappled
and brown, with delicate legs and horns. We pass very few people, a baby
lugged along in its cart, and accompanied by its brothers and sisters;
a fox-terrier comes barking at our wheels; at last the phaeton stops
abruptly between two or three roadside houses, and the coachman,
pointing with his whip, says, 'That is "The Mitford," ma'am.--That's
where Miss Mitford used to live!'

Was that all? I saw two or three commonplace houses skirting the dusty
road, I saw a comfortable public-house with an elm tree, and beside it
another grey unpretentious little house, with a slate roof and square
walls, and an inscription, 'The Mitford,' painted over the doorway....

I had been expecting I knew not what; a spire, a pump, a green, a
winding street: my preconceived village in the air had immediately to be
swept into space, and in its stead, behold the inn with its sign-post,
and these half-dozen brick tenements, more or less cut to one square
pattern! So this was all! this was 'our village' of which the author
had written so charmingly! These were the sights the kind eyes had dwelt
upon, seeing in them all, the soul of hidden things, rather than dull
bricks and slates. Except for one memory, Three Mile Cross would seem to
be one of the dullest and most uninteresting of country places....

But we have Miss Mitford's own description. 'The Cross is not a borough,
thank Heaven, either rotten or independent. The inhabitants ar