But where, tell me where, are not artists in England? And where, tell me where, do artists gather in squads that Ethel Cottages do not spring up like the tents of an army with banners? For even painters must eat and be lodged, the aboriginal habitations are not of elastic capacity, the inns are of feeble digestion, and the third summer of an artistic invasion is sure to find "Ethels" and "Mabels" in red brick and stunning whitewash, and, like our row of laborers' cottages, cursed by artists, but inhabited by them. It was a _soulagement_ of our aesthetic discomfort that so long as we remained hidden within it we never realized our own hideousness. Now and then we saw the ugly squareness of our afternoon shadow upon our aristocratically-gravelled front yard, but ordinarily we saw only dreamy distances melting into piny duskiness against the far-off sky, the serpent-like windings of the tranquil river, upon which its navy looked like dust-motes, fair fields of golden grain, and the farm-houses and cottages which looked upon our blank brickness with admiration and wondered why we were despised of our less beautifully housed kind, when our forks were four-pronged and of silvery seeming and our floors carpeted to our sybaritic feet. It was only when we returned to our Ethel after long tramps over the country-side, from a four-miles-distant Norman tower or a ten-miles-away pre-Reformation abbey, now stable or granary, that we figuratively beat our breasts and tore our hair because Fate had not made us _real_ tramps, privileged to sleep in pre-Reformation stables or 'neath pre-Reformation stars, rather than the imitation tramps we were, wedded to the habits but loathing the aspect of red-faced, staring Ethels.