aracteristic of the
jerry-built and decaying place in the cheap sentiment that had been too
slovenly to spell its own name correctly. Yet to the left, over the
housetops of foul black streets running upwards from the railway-lines,
there shone the great silver plain, and afar off a channel set with
white sailing-ships and steamers, and dark majestic hills. But because
of the quality of the place, and perhaps of her guide, she did not want
to recognise its beauty.

When they came to a cross-roads that followed westward along the crest
of the hill she would hardly admit to herself that this was better, that
this was indeed right in a unique way, and that the dignified houses of
white marl and oak on one side of the road and the public lawns on the
other were quite good for England. She was not softened by Marion's
proud mutter: "It's jolly in spring, seeing the blue sea through the gap
in the may hedge. And on the other side of the hedge there's one of
those old grass roads. They used to say they were Roman, but they're far
older. Older than Stonehenge. This used to run all the way to
Canfleet--that's where Kerith Island touches the mainland--but it's all
gone but this part here...." She disliked the road when it took a
disclaiming twist and left the houses out of sight and travelled between
low oaks, because it was the road home, and she would never have chosen
a home in this strange place, whose lack of meaning for herself could be
measured by its plentitude of meaning for this woman who was so unlike
her.

Certainly she would never have chosen this home. Very thick, trim hedges
gave the long garden the look of a pound; the standard rose-trees which
grew in round flower-beds on the lawn, which was of that excessively
deep green that grass takes on in gardens with a north aspect, had the
air of being detained in custody, and the borders on each side of the
broad gravel path showed that extreme neatness which is found in places
of detention. The red brick farmhouse at its end was very small, and its
windows such mere square peep-holes among a strong growth of ivy that
one conceived its inhabitants as being able to see the light only by
pressing their faces close against the glass.

"Oh, I know it's ugly!" muttered Marion, holding back the gate for her.
"I should have had it pulled down when I built on the new rooms. But
it's been here two hundred years, and there are some of the beams of the
house that was here before