A short, comfortably stout, elderly woman, with a round, rosy face and kind blue eyes beaming behind steel-rimmed spectacles. On Sundays the spectacles had gold rims and were never seen on any other day. To be taken as a lodger by Mrs. Cushion implied introductions and references—from the lodger—and Mrs. Cushion was by no means too easily pleased. If neither the vicar, the doctor, nor the squire could guarantee your integrity and personal pleasantness, there was no hope of obtaining Mrs. Cushion’s rooms. Moreover, she preferred gentlemen. She was frankly emphatic about that. To be sure, in wet weather "they did make a goodish mess," what with tackle and muddy boots and the many garments that got soaking wet and had to be dried. But then, they _did_ go out for most of the day, and that gave a body time to clear up after them. And when they’d had their dinners they put their feet on the mantelpiece—"I always clears all my own things off of it except the clock"—and they smoked peaceably till they went to bed. "Now, ladies"—it was clear that Mrs. Cushion was not partial to ladies—"they did stay indoors if there cum so much as a spot of rain." And they rang their bells at all sorts of awkward times. "You couldn’t be sure of ’em like you was of gentlemen. When a gentleman settles down, he settles down, and you knows where you are, and what’s more, you knows where _’e_ is. Now, ladies, as often as not, ’ud be upon you in your kitching before you so much as knew they was in the passage—an’ it were onsettlin’." No lady was ever allowed to set foot in Mrs. Cushion’s hospitable house in May or June or the first part of July. Those months were sacred to the fishers; but as a favour to one of the references she would sometimes consent to take a lady in August. The vicar, my old friend, was my reference, and he stood surety for my general "peaceableness." He assured Mrs. Cushion that so long as I might sleep with my back to the light that I would not want to alter everything in my bedroom (one lady lodger had done this, and Mrs. Cushion never forgot or forgave the "’ubbub" that ensued), that I was in search of perfect quiet in which to finish a book, and lastly he got at Mrs. Cushion through her kind heart—declaring that I was a delicate, muddly, incapable sort of person who required looking after. So at the beginning of a singularly sunny August I went down to Redmarley to take possession of two rooms in "Snig’s Cottage." The cottage stands about half a mile from Redmarley itself, high above a bend of the river known as "Snig’s Ferry," and the villagers always call it "Snig’s."