“They have some intelligent people in their ranks, I am told,” said the vicar, “writers and so forth. Quite a distinguished playwright, my eldest daughter was telling me—I forget his name.
“Milly, dear! Oh! she’s not here. Painters, too, they have. This Socialist, it seems to me, is part of the Unrest of the Age.... But, as you say, the spirit of the people is against it. In the country, at any rate. The people down here are too sturdily independent in their small way—and too sensible altogether.”...
“It’s a great thing for Duffield to have Lady Grove occupied again,” he was saying when my wandering attention came back from some attractive casualty in his wife’s discourse. “People have always looked up to the house and considering all things, old Mr. Durgan really was extraordinarily good—extraordinarily good. You intend to give us a good deal of your time here, I hope.”
“I mean to do my duty by the Parish,” said my uncle.
“I’m sincerely glad to hear it—sincerely. We’ve missed—the house influence. An English village isn’t complete—People get out of hand. Life grows dull. The young people drift away to London.”
He enjoyed his cigar gingerly for a moment.
“We shall look to you to liven things up,” he said, poor man!
My uncle cocked his cigar and removed it from his mouth.
“What you think the place wants?” he asked.
He did not wait for an answer. “I been thinking while you been talking—things one might do. Cricket—a good English game—sports. Build the chaps a pavilion perhaps. Then every village ought to have a miniature rifle range.”