Mitchelhurst was, as Mr. Hayes had said, a dull little village, by no means likely to attract visitors. It was merely a group of houses, for the most part meanly built, set in a haphazard fashion on either side of a wide road. Occasionally a shed would come to the front, or two or three poplars, or a bit of garden fence. But the poplars were apt to be mercilessly lopped, with just a tuft at the extreme tip, which gave each unlucky tree a slight resemblance to a lion's tail, and the gardens, if not full of cabbages, displayed melancholy rows of stumps where cabbages had been. There was very little traffic through Mitchelhurst Street, as this thoroughfare was usually called, yet it showed certain signs of life. Fowls rambled aimlessly about it, with a dejected yet inquiring air, which seemed to say that they would long ago have given up their desultory pecking if they could have found anything else to do. A windmill, standing on a slight eminence a little way from the road, creaked as its sails revolved. Sounds of hammering came from the blacksmith's forge. Children played on the foot-path, a little knot of loungers might generally be seen in front of the "Rothwell Arms," and at most of the doorways stood the Mitchelhurst women, talking loudly while their busy fingers were plaiting straws. This miserably paid work was much in vogue in the village, where generation after generation of children learned it, and grew up into stunted, ill-fed girls, fond of coarse gossip, and of their slatternly independence.