Mrs. Birkin, Mrs. Cushion, and hundreds like them, have had their hand in the making of our men. They are but humble, simple folk. In their lives they asked but little of fate, and what fate sent they accepted with the patient philosophy of the poor. They belonged to their period, and their period has passed. Cotswold names are so much prettier than any one can imagine that it has always been a self-denying ordinance to refrain from using them, but generally I have resisted temptation. Otherwise somebody might go seeking Mrs. Birkin in Arlington Row and be angry with me because she is no longer there. I live in terror of accurate people with large-scale maps, who seek to pin me down to this place or that. But they may take it from me that all the places are, as the Cotswold folk would say, "thar or thar about." London, _May_ 1918. *CONTENTS* CHAPTER I. Mrs. Birkin’s Bonnet II. A Philosopher of the Cotswolds III. Especially Those IV. At Blue House Lock V. Keturah VI. Mrs. Cushion’s Children VII. Sanctuary VIII. A Cotswold Barmaid IX. Fuzzy Wuzzy’s Watch X. The Dark Lady XI. Her First Appearance XII. "Our Fathers Have Told Us" XIII. A Giotto of the Cotswolds XIV. The Day After XV. A Coup d’État XVI. The Staceys of Elcombe House XVII. A Soldier’s Button XVIII. Paul and the Playwright XIX. A Misfit XX. The Contagion of Honour *CHILDREN OF THE DEAR COTSWOLDS* *I* *MRS. BIRKIN’S BONNET* The very first time that the baby went out the monthly nurse carried her to see Mrs. Birkin; and as she marched with slow and stately tread up the narrow garden path to the cottage, a swarm of bees settled all over both infant and nurse. Fortunately the nurse was a Cotswold woman, and knew full well that if a swarm of bees settles upon an infant during the first month of its existence, and departs without stinging, it is a very lucky omen. And people born in other parts of the world will agree as to the good fortune of the latter contingency. Mrs. Birkin in her porch, and the nurse in her cloak of bees, stood like two statues in the hot sunshine of that September afternoon, the nurse hardly daring to breathe, lest by some inadvertent movement she should change so stupendous a piece of luck into disaster. Presently the brown cloud lifted itself from the white bundle in the anxious nurse’s arms and passed with its own triumphant music to some other place. The baby still slept sweetly, oblivious alike of good or evil fortune. Mrs. Birkin, her ruddy cheeks pale under the weather-stains of years, came forth from her cottage as the nurse tottered to meet her, holding out the baby and exclaiming hysterically: ’Take her, take her, and let me sit down somewhere, for my legs won’t bear me no longer!’