Produced by Chuck Greif, Sigal Alon and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE FARRINGDONS BY ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER AUTHOR OF CONCERNING ISABEL CARNABY, A DOUBLE THREAD, ETC. NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900 COPYRIGHT, 1900, _All rights reserved._ DEDICATION For all such readers as have chanced to be Either in Mershire or in Arcady, I write this book, that each may smile, and say, "Once on a time I also passed that way." CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I.--THE OSIERFIELD 1 II.--CHRISTOPHER 12 III.--MRS. BATESON'S TEA-PARTY 29 IV.--SCHOOL-DAYS 51 V.--THE MOAT HOUSE 70 VI.--WHIT MONDAY 90 VII.--BROADER VIEWS 114 VIII.--GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS 137 IX.--FELICIA FINDS HAPPINESS 156 X.--CHANGES 187 XI.--MISS FARRINGDON'S WILL 213 XII.--"THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP" 232 XIII.--CECIL FARQUHAR 249 XIV.--ON THE RIVER 272 XV.--LITTLE WILLIE 292 XVI.--THIS SIDE OF THE HILLS 306 XVII.--GEORGE FARRINGDON'S SON 325 XVIII.--THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLS 346 * * * * * THE FARRINGDONS CHAPTER I THE OSIERFIELD They herded not with soulless swine, Nor let strange snares their path environ: Their only pitfall was a mine-- Their pigs were made of iron. In the middle of Sedgehill, which is in the middle of Mershire, which is in the middle of England, there lies a narrow ridge of high table-land, dividing, as by a straight line, the collieries and ironworks of the great coal district from the green and pleasant scenery of the western Midlands. Along the summit of this ridge runs the High Street of the bleak little town of Sedgehill; so that the houses on the east side of this street see nothing through their back windows save the huge slag-mounds and blazing furnaces and tall chimneys of the weird and terrible, yet withal fascinating, Black Country; while the houses on the west side of the street have sunny gardens and fruitful orchards, sloping down toward a fertile land of woods and streams and meadows, bounded in the far distance by the Clee Hills and the Wrekin, and in the farthest distance of all by the blue Welsh mountains.