About half a mile from Corlesham I met the postman coming up the hill, wheeling his bicycle. He was a sandy-haired man, splendidly Saxon, with gray-blue eyes and broad mouth. I asked him if there was a footpath to Corlesham, and he directed me.
“Do you have a long round?” I asked.
“Three or four mile, maybe,” he said, looking at me narrowly.
“It’s a good pull up to the Institution,” I ventured.
“What institution might that be?” he said, and his mild blue eyes disarmed me with their ingenuousness.
“The house with the three red gables,” I answered.
“Oh!” came the reply. “You mean old Gateshead’s.”
“Does he own it?” I said incredulously.
“Ay, and he could own six others for all the difference it would make to his money. He owns half the county.”
“And yet what a strange idea,” I murmured insinuatingly. “To own a large house and yet to have one’s letters delivered in a wood!”