“Now that is just the point on which you are so much deceived,” replied Mr. Black. “There is no place on earth where a small income can be made go so far as in London. Do you want meat? You can have what you want, cut as you like, sent home on the instant. Now here, I suppose, your butcher lives five miles off; everything is at least five miles off in the country. For rich and poor alike, London is the place. What is there a man can’t get there?” “Green fields,” answered Mrs. Black. “Green fields! nonsense,” returned her husband. “Have not you the parks? What can a human being desire better than St. James’s Park, or Regent’s Park, or even Victoria? Is not there grass enough in them to content you? Is Hampstead Heath not big enough for you to walk over? Have not you the squares? Have not you trees? Even in the City there is not a street but you may see a tree in it. Do you want amusement? There is not a night but you may go to a dozen places of amusement, if you like. Do you want society? You can have as much as you please. Do you want books? They lie ready to your hand. Everything is next door in London. We have not to send a dozen miles for a lemon there, ma’am, as Mr. What-ever-you-may-call-him, that parson fellow, said he had to do. From grapes at thirty shillings a pound to a farthing’s worth of tea-dust, you can be accommodated in London. There is no place like it on earth, Mrs. Dudley, take my word.” Poor Mrs. Dudley sighed, and answered “that, for her part, she liked the pure country air.” “There never was a more mistaken idea than that,” said Mr. Black. “Country air is not pure. How should it be, with its decomposing vegetation, with its damp fields, with its ditches filled with grass and dead leaves, with its arable land covered with natural and artificial manures, with its imperfect drainage, with its impure water? Read the Registrar-General’s returns, and you will soon change your opinion about the healthfulness of the country.” “That is what I often say,” remarked Mrs. Ormson. “But still there are some most unpleasant smells in London,” observed Mrs. Black, feebly. “In Bermondsey, for instance,” added Bessie. “All healthy,” persisted Mr. Black. “Now, in the country, people breathe poison without knowing what they are swallowing. What is called pure air is very like sparkling water; it seems so because it is full of the seeds of disease, because it is literally laden with decomposition and——” “The eight o’clock express stops at Palinsbridge, uncle,” suggested Bessie at this point. “You might catch it if you were to sit up all night, and start away from here, say, at five o’clock in the morning. I should not stay another day in the country, if I were you.” “Well put in, Bessie; but I won’t take your advice for all that,” said Mr. Black, good humouredly. “I have come down here meaning to enjoy myself, and to make a complete holiday of it.”