“I quite understand.”
“Yes; my ease of mind was menaced. And without that, where are you? In a pea-soup fog.” He laughed boyishly, and added: “I say, how good your mutton is!”
Presently he took the road without any directions or warnings from Pawley.
II
For a minute or two he stood still, admiring the village green, in the centre of which was a cricket pitch in fairly good order. The church faced him with its low square tower of concrete. Bits of the concrete had fallen off, revealing the bricks beneath. “Not too much money here,” thought the young man. His eyes rested upon the cottages, mostly whitewashed, with heavy thatched roofs, very picturesque, and all of them more than a hundred years old. The general effect pleased. Perhaps the best house (barring the doctor’s) was The Chandos Arms, with a wide gravel sweep in front of it, and ample stable accommodation. A house of delightful rotundities—bow windows flanking a big hospitable door, dormer windows winking at you out of the thatch, and the thatch itself—a masterpiece of craftsmanship—not cut straight along the eaves but undulating in semicircles of generous diameter. Grimshaw guessed that it had been a prosperous inn during coaching-days, had suffered a decline in custom, and was now blooming in a sort of Indian summer by reason of the increased motor traffic. All the cottages stood back from the road that skirted the green, with small front gardens ablaze with old-fashioned flowers. From where he stood, looking to the left, he could see the trees in the park, and above them the chimneys of the Manor. If the lady of that Manor chose to stand upon her roof she could survey the village, and outwardly at least it must have gladdened her eye. Hard by the church, and beyond it, snuggled the Vicarage. In front of the inn spread a large horse-pond, a treasure-house of fresh-water infusoria. The face of any amateur microscopist would have brightened at the sight of it.
Grimshaw strolled on, crossing the pitch. A wide street led from the green into the grass country beyond, with cottages on both sides of it. No modern buildings offended the artistic sense. Grimshaw passed the post-office, the village store, the baker’s, and a cobbler’s. He could see no chapel. Nonconformity obviously went without a place of worship in Upworthy. Being Saturday afternoon, many children were playing in front of the cottages. Grimshaw stared at them with professional interest. They appeared to be clean, but not too robust. A few were rickety.
From a blacksmith’s forge came the cheery sound of hammer on anvil.
Grimshaw nodded to the smith and bade him “Good day.” The smith, nothing loath for a chat, paused in his work, observing critically:
“You be a stranger in these parts?”
“I am,” said Grimshaw.