mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered
an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of
the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English
country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid
summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was
left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk
would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun
to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth,
dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed
that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source
of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to
eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion
as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons
concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not
of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the
ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight
and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep
wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and
of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of
him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup,
of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant
colours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding
it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house.
His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to
their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll.
One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain
attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his
eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond
the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most
characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted
to sketch.

It stood upon a low hill, above the river--the river being the Thames at
some forty miles from London. A long gabled front of red brick, with
the complexion of which time and the weather had played all sorts of
pictorial tricks, only, however, to improve and refine it, presented
to the lawn its patches of ivy, its clustered chimneys, its windows
smothered in creepers. The house had a name and a history; the old
gentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these

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