He had become very interested in John Trevena's novels, "A Pixy in Petticoats," and "Arminel of the West," which he unearthed from my shelves at school, and when he heard that we were in the neighbourhood of the scenes therein depicted, nothing would content him but that we should see for ourselves whether the people were as delightful or the scenery so wonderful as Trevena had made them out to be; so we tramped round the fringe of Dartmoor and put up at the first house we saw that appealed to us on the outskirts of Chagford. Looking back on it now I can honestly say that in this sweet village, nestling under the shadow of the great moor, I found my ideal home: no other place has ever given me, from the first moment I saw it in the distance, quite the same sense of security and home. We were welcomed at Fernworthy View as if we were prodigal sons returned home at last. We had a wonderfully capacious sitting-room with a piano, which we thumped on every night, singing ribald songs, "Buffalo Gals," "The Mulligan Guards," and the latest musical comedy bits with Betty and Thomasin, the two daughters of the house who waited on us. Before we had been there three days we had made friends with the parson, the doctor, one or two hunting men and all the villagers. We used to go and gossip in the pubs, over the counter at the shops, and up by the village pump opposite the church, where the majority of the yokels used to collect in the evening to discuss the doings of the day: we learnt a good deal of local scandal, accounts of the day's sport with the hounds, or fishing or shooting. Wherever we went we seemed to make friends. And then by day, when the villagers were at work, we used to go out on to the moor and follow the Wallabrook, trying to trace each part of the stream to its source.