ces I ever
came across."

Richard Staines and his wife had agreed that they would live principally
in the country, and one day during their engagement Jane took Richard
down to Selsdon Bois to show him the house of her dreams, known to the
Post Office as Midway. Then, when he came to select, he would know the
kind of thing to look for. Jane had known Midway in her childhood, and
had loved its wide and gentle staircases, its fine Jacobean panelling,
its stone roof, and its old garden with the paved walks between yew
hedges.

"Well," said Richard, "if you are so keen on the place, why shouldn't we
wait for a chance to get it, instead of looking for something more or
less like it?"

"Because you can't," said Jane. "We're general public, and general
public is never allowed to buy a place like Midway. People live in it
till they die, and then leave it to the person they love best, and that
person lives in it till he dies. And so on again. It never comes into
the market. Things that are really valuable hardly ever do."

The conversation took place in the train which was conveying them to
Selsdon Bois.

"Ah, well," said Richard, "what is there? It needn't be very big to be
too big for us."

"Not a big house at all. I never counted, but I should think about
twenty rooms." She made guesses as to acreage of garden, orchard, and
grass-land. She admitted that they were merely guesses.

"The only thing that I really remember is that it was thirty-six acres
in all. Could we do it?"

"Yes," said Richard; "we ought to be able to do that."

"Still, it doesn't matter," said Jane despondently, "because, of course,
places like that are never to be got."

Then they stepped out on to the platform of Selsdon Bois Station, where
a man was busily pasting up a bill. It announced the sale by auction,
unless previously disposed of, of Midway.

"Miracle!" said Jane, subsiding gracefully on to a milk-can. "It's
ours!"

And a fortnight later it was really theirs. The house was as delightful
as Jane had said, but it was an old house, and during the last ten years
had not been well kept up. There was a good deal to be done to make it
quite comfortable and satisfactory. The work was to have been finished
by the time Richard and his wife returned from the honeymoon.

"It's been simply funny the way we've been kept back," said the builder
cheerfully. "But you might be able to get in, say, in another week or
so."

They remained for a mo