The difficulty of fitting in Mrs. Rowlands was not so much her husband, for she had him well in hand, nor the villagers, who to tell the truth were rather apathetic about her innovations. (I remember there was some trouble when she proposed a scheme for the bringing up of all the children of the parish in complete ignorance of who their parents were, but this was averted somehow.) The real difficulty was with Lady Combe, the Squiress of the place, from whom my house was rented before I managed to buy it. Lady Combe, the wife of Sir Richard Combe, an amiable old nonentity, combined a most acidulated manner and a total incapacity for all politeness in conversation with an inexhaustible desire to mother the parish, the county, and the world in general. She was also incurably old-fashioned. Her great speciality was bazaars (which she still pronounced in the old-fashioned way, with the accent on the last syllable), and of these she seldom organized less than three in a twelvemonth. Her preference, she confided to me, would have been for the old style of bazaar when you actually had “stalls” with goods laid out on them after the manner of an ordinary shop, and the neighbours came and bought such goods, at fancy prices, quite regardless of whether they needed them or not. She said she got rid of all the _really_ ugly things in her house that way—I cannot think what they must have been like, considering what was left. As it was, she demanded your presence at the bazaar itself if you were to be awarded your winning numbers. And, unless she were violently discouraged, she would have her lawn (or mine, for that matter) set out with a whole array of skittle-alleys, coco-nut shies, and lucky tubs such as, I suppose, our great-aunts must have revelled in.