We reached Winfield for lunch in Canon Frome's hospitable rectory, and at tea-time strolled over to see some friends of the Fromes named Harberton, who live in a very charming house amid a thick shrubbery: one of those secure and serene houses that are found only in England, a perfect backwater in the stream of industry and ambition. Harberton is a man of about my own age, a dilettante with literary tastes and some reputation as the editor of Boswell. His wife is much younger--a beautiful woman with very quick sympathies and understanding. Not particularly clever herself, but stimulating others to their best. She has three children, all girls, and when we arrived the whole family was under a cedar about a tea-table. Some white pigeons fluttered on the roof and a spaniel regained its feet with extreme deliberateness and walked slowly to meet and investigate us. The lawn was like velvet: too soft for any game. Looking at it all I could not help wondering how my young friend Spanton would snort at it. Nothing but leisure and culture here, he would say. No progress. Dead languages, belles-lettres. Everything that is retrograde. And yet surely there must be, even in a new England of intense socialistic activity, some oases such as this, where ancient peace reigns and children are being thoughtfully brought up to be old-fashioned--as I am sure these three little girls will be. Let there be here and there tiny spots of ointment among the flies! Mrs. Harberton is all right, of course: she is a mother, and an influence; but as to how far it would be possible to defend Harberton against the Spantons I cannot say. His class doubtless will be put upon its trial before long, just as the Farrars will. You may be very charming and distinguished and all that, the Spantons will say, but what are you doing for your country and your kind? You are living on dividends earned by other people's labour. That has got to stop. You have got to disgorge and labour yourself. What will you do? What could Harberton do? What could I do? It is funny that I should thus bracket myself with Harberton, for that night Naomi told me that he reminded her not a little of me. "That's odd," I said, "for Mrs. Harberton reminds me rather of you." CHAPTER XXXI IN WHICH WE MEET A WARDEN AND HER CHARGES, AND HEAR TWO OR THREE STORIES OF STORMY VOYAGES ON LIFE'S WATERS BEFORE HAVEN WAS REACHED