So Brown’s knee, of course, has given out. They are a happy pair, one in bed and the other with his leg up on a chair, talking woods and shooting, fishing, and birds’ eggs, and they’re smoking—how they smoke! I think the bromide’s swallowed. There’s a contented look in Sam’s eyes and a ’Oh-well-stretched-a-point-for-once,’ in my dear brother’s. So I proceeded to carry out my patent plan of finding houses and had a delightful and exciting morning. It was a lovely day, the hedges were a soft promise of green, and the bright sunshine and some saucy robins made a brave pretence of summer. I rambled down all kinds of little lanes and by-paths, but never a house did I see to suit me, till at last I chanced on Lynford, a little place I fell in love with at first sight and which I am sure is after Michael’s own heart. The village is built on the slope of a hill, with a little church on the summit and charming old world cottages clustered together in picturesque confusion just below. Alas, the cottages were quite small ones, with only four or five rooms at most, and so not practicable. The last house in the village was a great surprise. It was larger than the others, with quaint little diamond windows and a glorious old red roof, and lots of creepers climbing over, which would make it in the autumn a thing of flaming beauty. In the flower borders crocuses and snowdrops were already peeping, and the porch was aflame with yellow winter jasmine. The view was superb, for the hill sloped steeply from the house, and at my feet lay beautiful water meadows all in flood after the snow, with the ruins of an old abbey in the near distance. Without stopping to think of anything but the fact that it was the kind of habitation I was looking for, I boldly walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Here my courage, which I had thought was screwed to the sticking point, began, in the most horrible manner, to trickle out of my boots, but before I could escape an elderly and severe domestic opened the door and glared at me as if I wanted to sell her something. I inquired if I might see the owner on a matter of business. She hesitated and, after looking me well up and down, most reluctantly said, ’I’ll see.’ She departed down the old flagged passage, leaving me on the mat with my last shred of courage in tatters and my knees a jelly. After a minute or two she returned and said, ’The master will see you,’ and if ever a woman’s sour visage said ’More fool he,’ that woman’s did. As the last moments of a drowning man are crammed with the recollections of a lifetime, so all the silly, impulsive things I have done in my life crowded on me as I followed down that stone passage. Why, oh, why did I have an Irish grandmother to lead me into this scrape? What on earth could I say to ’the master’ that wouldn’t sound the most appalling impertinence? I entered his presence rather more quickly than I meant to, as I fell down a small step.