ace for two slow pedestrians
to leave behind. Worse still, when we did leave it we found that Reading
would not leave us. It was like a stupendous octopus in red brick
which threw out red tentacles, miles and miles long in various
directions--little rows and single and double cottages and villas, all
in red, red brick and its weary accompaniment, the everlasting hard
slate roof. These square red brick boxes with sloping slate tops are
built as close as possible to the public road, so that the passer-by
looking in at the windows may see the whole interior--wall-papers,
pictures, furniture, and oftentimes the dull expressionless face of the
woman of the house, staring back at you out of her shallow blue eyes.
The weather too was against us; a grey hard sky, like the slate roofs,
and a cold strong east wind to make the road dusty all day long.

Arrived at Three Mile Cross, it was no surprise to find it no longer
recognizable as the hamlet described in Our Village, but it was
saddening to look at the cottage in which Mary Russell Mitford lived and
was on the whole very happy with her flowers and work for thirty years
of her life, in its present degraded state. It has a sign now and calls
itself the "Mitford Arms" and a "Temperance Hotel," and we were told
that you could get tea and bread and butter there but nothing else. The
cottage has been much altered since Miss Mitford's time, and the open
space once occupied by the beloved garden is now filled with buildings,
including a corrugated-iron dissenting chapel.

From Three Mile Cross we walked on to Swallowfield, still by those
never-ending roadside red-brick cottages and villas, for we were not yet
properly out of the hated biscuit metropolis. It was a big village with
the houses scattered far and wide over several square miles of country,
but just where the church stands it is shady and pleasant. The pretty
church yard too is very deeply shaded and occupies a small hill with the
Loddon flowing partly round it, then taking its swift way through the
village. Miss Mitford's monument is a plain, almost an ugly, granite
cross, standing close to the wall, shaded by yew, elm, and beech trees,
and one is grateful to think that if she never had her reward when
living she has found at any rate a very peaceful resting-place.

The sexton was there and told us that he was but ten years old when
Miss Mitford died, but that he remembered her well and she was a very
pleasant little wom