The Manor Farm, as a house, was of no very great extent, though larger than farm-houses generally are, and much improved by the alterations and additions which successive tenants had thought fit to make. In front it had gables and square windows which made recesses within, and an old green porch which was now gay with geraniums; and, standing as it did on the summit of the hill, it looked down over a wide extent of Fen. From the upper windows, if you awoke early in the morning, you could see white mists beneath a glow of sunrise; or, possibly, at a later period of the year, miles of water, the unfortunate result of autumn floods. These front bedrooms were the best and the largest in the house, and for some time had been left untenanted; but, just now, they had been recently given over to the use of the lady and gentleman from ‘Lon’on.’ That lady and gentleman had now inhabited them for a week, and had been the cause of much speculation, as may be supposed. It was not imagined that they would stay there long, for Lon’on people do not like country ways. And yet even Lon’on people might have found themselves content with the brilliant flowers that were the garden’s pride, with the sweep of green field beyond, vivid in the sunlight, with the corn-fields, and the wide-stretching distance, blue against the sky. In Lon’on there is no such distance or such silence, such clearness of atmosphere without the breath of smoke, such sudden gleams upon grass and golden corn, such songs of blackbird or of thrush to break the stillness. The people of Lon’on have to content themselves with Lanes in which there is not the smallest blade of grass, with the tramp of men, and with music bought with shillings, with the glare of footlights, and the rush of cabs and trains. It is well if these pleasures do not leave them blind, deaf, and senseless to the earth and sky, so that when they are in the midst of the beauty of the country, the beauty of the country has no voice or charm for them. It is to be supposed that it had little voice or charm for one discontented wanderer from the great city’s streets--Miss Tina Gillan, retired to her apartment, and leaning against the window of her room. Before her the sunlight shone on flowers and grass, on meadows, corn-fields, and wide blue distance. She let her glance wander over the extent of country before she turned away to express her thought to herself. ‘To think,’ she cried, petulantly, as she flung up her arms, ‘that I should have sunk as low as a village in the Fens!’