THE INVASION.
I thought—being very old indeed, "older," as a poem by Mr. Sturge Moore begins, "than most sheep"—I thought, being so exceedingly mature and disillusioned, that I knew all the worries of life. Yet I did not; there was still one that was waiting for me round the corner, but I know that too, now.
I will tell you about it.
To begin with, let me describe myself. I am an ordinary quiet-living obscure person, neither exalted nor lowly, who, having tired of town, took a little place in the country and there settled down to a life of placidity, varied by such inroads upon ease as all back-to-the-landers know: now a raid on the chickens by a fox, whose humour it is not to devour but merely to decapitate; now the disappearance of the gardener at Lord Derby's coat-tails; now a flood; and now and continually a desire on the part of the cook to give a month's notice, if you please, and the consequent resumption of correspondence with the registry office. There you have the main lines of the existence not only of myself, but of thousands of other English rural recluses. But for such little difficulties I have been happy—a Cincinnatus ungrumbling.
The new fly entered the ointment about three weeks ago, when a parcel was brought to me by a footman from the Priory, some three miles away, with a message to the effect that it had been delivered there and opened in error. They were of course very sorry.
I asked how the mistake had occurred.
"Same name," he said. "The house has just been let furnished to some people of the same name as yourself."
Now I have always rather prided myself on the rarity of my name. I don't go so far as to claim that it came over with the Conqueror, but it is an old name and an uncommon one, and hitherto I had been the only owner of it in the district. To have it duplicated was annoying.
Worse however was to come.