It was half-past three on Good Friday afternoon. There is something about that little Easter cluster of Sundays that weighs your heart down, if you are in postless London, and expecting a letter. “Where is your son?” he asked. “In Hampshire, in the Cottage Hospital, near the Red Place. You could put up at the Red Place. Samuel, being a fool, said you might have the big black and white room on the first floor. He might have let it for five guineas over Bank Holiday.” “What time is the train?” asked the gardener. “My car is at the door. The chauffeur is a dangerous lunatic, and there seems to me to be every likelihood that the back wheel will come off before we get out of London. But—are you coming?” So the gardener came. Seated behind the dangerous lunatic, over the dangerous back wheel, and beside a hostess in a musical comedy motor bonnet, he followed once more the road that led to the gods. He had left his address with Miss Shakespeare for the forwarding of letters. The great surprise of spring awaited them outside London. There were lambs under a pale sky, and violets under pale green hedges. Gnarled trees, like strong men’s muscles, curved out of roadside copses, lit with a green radiance. There was lilac smiling across the cottage gardens, there were wallflowers blotted dark against whitewashed walls. But when they reached the pines and heath they left the spring behind. Only the larches preached its gospel. “You had better come and see Samuel first,” said Mrs. Rust. “He is anxious to see you. He always was a fool.” So they passed the Red Place. It flared out at them along a sombre ride that cut the woods in two. “Samuel says his gods look after the place as well as any manager, while he is away. But of course he has a chef now, and a competent bureau clerk.” “I suppose you couldn’t ask the gods to dish up the dinner, or make out the bills,” admitted the gardener regretfully. “But I wonder if there’s room for the gods as well as the chef and the competent bureau clerk.” “Stuff and nonsense,” said Mrs. Rust. “A good dinner’s worth all the gods in mythology.” They drove up to their destination.