Two pretty maids having arrived, one to take away the tea and the other to be with the little girls, Mr. Harberton suggested that we should go and see the Warden. This he said with a slight smile that made the invitation very pleasant, and I joined Mrs. Harberton with thoughts of Trollope in my head and visions of the white-haired president of a college. Judge, then, of my surprise when a little shy woman met us not far from the gate and we were introduced to Miss Mitt, the Warden of the Pink Almshouses. Again I anticipated wrongly, for instead of the rose-tinted building which these words led me to expect, I found a very beautiful edifice in grey stone with a long, warmly-tiled roof, the founder of which was a Mrs. Pink, a friend of Mrs. Harberton. There are beautiful almshouses all over England, and someone ought to write a book describing them, especially as almshouse architecture is almost the best indigenous domestic architecture that we have. Such temptations as beset modern architects when they build private houses seem for the most part to be absent when they build almshouses. Another triumph for humility, perhaps. For the time being even the most ambitious designer, remembering the purpose of the building, is forced to be simple. The most amusing almshouse I know is at Chichester, where, under one great dark red roof with pretty dormers in it, dwell several old ladies, each in her own apartments, like an undergraduate or a nun, with a nurse at one end of the central passage and a chapel at the other. But I like the more usual plan better--the row of tiny domiciles like a terrace for fairy godmothers, the little gardens, the muslin blinds, and all the evidences of security. Such a building was that which a young architect in a soft flannel collar (as I guess) had put up for Mrs. Harberton with Mrs. Pink's legacy. Mrs. Pink's almshouses are all that she would have desired: a long, low façade with two wings at right angles and a flagged garden in the intervening space. Quite a suggestion of "The Harbour of Refuge," but no harm in that. By using old materials the architect had prevented any appearance of crudity, and creepers were already high on the walls. There are thirteen little houses under this long roof, three in each wing and seven in the main building, of which the Warden's house is the middle one. The twelve old women have to be either spinsters or widows and to be fifty-five or over, and it makes not the faintest difference whether or not they have ever been in receipt of parish relief. Each has ten shillings a week, light, and coal. On this allowance they find their own meals and dress; but in both respects they are often a little helped out by other friends or their own relations.