She held her tousled head very high and stuck out her sharp little chin. "My dear," said Jan, "what with my gregarious niece and my too-attractive nurse, I think it's a good thing we're all going down to Wren's End, where the garden-walls are high and the garden fairly large. Besides all that, there will be that dog with the teeth 'dead-level and big.'" "Remember," said Meg. "He treated me like a princess always." CHAPTER XV WREN'S END It stands just beyond the village of Amber Guiting, on the side furthest from the station, which is a mile from the village. "C. C. S. 1819" is carved above the front door, but the house was built a good fifty years previous to that date. One Charles Considine Smith, who had been a shipper of sherry in Billiter Street, in the City of London, bought it in that year from a Quaker called Solomon Page, who planted the yew hedge that surrounds the smooth green lawn seen from the windows of the morning-room. There was a curious clause attached to the title-deeds, which stipulated that no cats should be kept by the owner of Wren's End, lest they should interfere with the golden-crested wrens that built in the said yew hedge, or the brown wrens building at the foot of the hedges in the orchard. Appended to this injunction were the following verses: If aught disturb the wrens that build, If ever little wren be killed By dweller in Wren's End-- Misfortunes--whence he shall not know-- Shall fall on him like noiseless snow, And all his steps attend. Peace be upon this house; and all That dwell therein good luck befall, That do the wrens befriend. Charles Considine Smith faithfully kept to his agreement regarding the protection of the wrens, and much later wrote a series of articles upon their habits, which appeared in the _North Cotswold Herald_. He seems to have been on friendly terms with Solomon Page, who, having inherited a larger property in the next county, removed thence when he sold Wren's End. In 1824 Smith married Tranquil Page, daughter of Solomon. She was then thirty-seven years old, and, according to one of her husband's diaries, "a staid person like myself." She was twenty years younger than her husband and bore him one child, a daughter also named Tranquil. She, however, appears to have been less staid than her parents, for she ran away before she was twenty with a Scottish advocate called James Ross. The Smiths evidently forgave the wilful Tranquil, for, on the death of Charles, she and her husband left Scotland and settled with her mother at Wren's End. She had two children, Janet, the great-aunt who left Jan Wren's End, and James, Jan's grandfather, who was sent to Edinburgh for his education, and afterwards became a Writer to the Signet. He married and settled in Edinburgh, preferring Scotland to England, and it was with his knowledge and consent that Wren's End was left to his sister Janet.