care for him.
But he was found dead, and his pockets were rifled. The evening was the
end of the war in Surrey.

[Illustration: _The Swan, Thames Ditton._]

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DITTONS AND WALTON

Surbiton trains.--Thames Ditton.--Parks for trotting ponies.--A
forlorn garden.--The Dandies' Fete.--Graveyard poetry.--The
Pleasance of a Ferry.--Giggs Hill cricket.--Ditton Tulips.--Hampton
Bridge.--A dreary road.--Walton.--The Scold's Bridle.--John Selwyn
and the Stag.--Terror at an elephant.--William Lilly, astrologer.

Surbiton is a growth of seventy years, and was born when the railway
came. Once it was called a suburb of Kingston; now it has suburbs of its
own. Tramways join it to London; the railway empties Surbiton into
London every morning and pours London back again in the evening. Nearly
seventy trains a day stop at Surbiton on their way down from Waterloo;
nearly eighty stop on their way up. It must be quite inspiriting to lose
your train, and to know that you have only three minutes to wait; or to
catch the train before your train, or to choose which you will have of
two trains. Until you realise these figures, it is difficult to
understand why so many people are rushing about late for the train in
Surbiton station. They are catching the train before.

But Surbiton is not all villas; or perhaps it is, and it would be truer
to say that what is not villas within hail of the station is not
Surbiton. Thames Ditton lies rather more than a mile away, and Long
Ditton, between Thames Ditton and the railway, straggling, too, beyond
the railway. Thames Ditton is rapidly becoming rich and prosperous. A
few years ago it was a little, twisting main street, a ferry, an inn or
two, and a church, and was flanked by two fine properties, Ember Court
and Boyle Farm. Now the villa-builder has got to work, and the old
estates are being sliced up into acres and half acres. Ember Court was
once a manor belonging to Henry VIII, who hunted over it; later, it was
the property of Sir Arthur Onslow, the first Speaker of the House of
Commons who earned the title "Great." It is now a racecourse; trotting
ponies and American "machines" dash and flash where Mr. Speaker
sauntered staidly, and theatre bills flare at the entrance gates. Boyle
Farm has fared little better. Once it was the Duchess of Gloucester's,
wife of George the Third's brother; a century later, Lord St. Leonards,
Lord Chancellor in Lord Derby's