It proved that S—— had meanwhile got engaged—for which I cannot blame him—to somebody whose affections responded to his with less elaborate treatment. My nerves soon recovered, I am glad to say; and although symptoms of Hilton’s disease showed themselves about fifteen years later, by that time both the disease itself and its cure had been scientifically studied, and it only needed a few weeks to put me on my feet again. CHAPTER VI BUSINESS AND PLEASURE The country gentleman will always be the backbone of England; the backbone, and also the speedometer; the backbone, because the speedometer.—LORD HOPEDALE. It was only my illness that interrupted what had for some time been a cherished ambition with me,—to find a house for myself and my parents which, without being too far from London, would be more comfortable and more convenient to our needs. There was still one side of the great city which had never been affected by the growth of suburban railway facilities in the twenties and thirties—the little stretch of Hertfordshire that used to lie between the “Great Northern” and the “Great Eastern” systems. It was a fortunate choice that directed me to Greylands, a country property small for those days (though it seems large enough now!) in the neighbourhood of West Mill. The proximity of the Buntingford ’drome would make it easy to land near by even in bad weather, there was water on the estate, and I counted—alas! unnecessarily, as it proved—on the new golf links at Ardeley to satisfy my father’s active tastes. It was actually while we were engaged in moving into the new house that my poor father had a stroke, the precursor of no very distant end. He lingered during the remainder of that year (1941), and was sometimes well enough to be wheeled down to the links in a bath-scooter; but early in the new year he had a fresh stroke, and died that February. In him I seemed to lose another link with the old, vigorous generation that had seen the turn of the century. He rests in the churchyard at West Mill: his epitaph, written in the style of a past day, runs as follows: Sacred to the memory of HERBERT, FIRST BARON BLISWORTH, Who died at Greylands in this parish, deeply regretted, On the 6th of February, 1941, In the 62nd year of his age. An English gentleman of the old school, He was an unaffected friend, An indulgent parent, And a tolerant husband. “In the Heaven a perfect round.”