Ransby to-day is a little sleepy seaside town. The trade has gone away from it. Every summer thousands of holiday-makers from London invade it with foreign, feverish gaiety; when they are gone it relapses into its contented old-world quiet. In my boyhood, however, it was a place of provincial bustle and importance. The sailing vessels from the Baltic crowded its harbor, lying shoulder to shoulder against its quays, unloading their cargoes of tallow and timber and hemp. Now all that remains is the herring fishery and the manufacture of nets. Grandmother Cardover’s house stood near the harbor; from the street we could see the bare masts of the shipping lying at rest. In the front on the ground-floor was the shop, piled high with the necessaries of sea-going travel. There were coils of rope in the doorway, and anchors and sacks of ship’s biscuits; a little further in tarpaulin and oil-skin jackets hung from the ceiling, interspersed with smoked hams; and, at the back, stood rows of cheeses and upturned barrels on which ear-ringed sailor-men would sit and chat. Behind the counter was a door, with windows draped with red curtains. It led into what was called the keeping-room, a cozy parlor in which we took our meals, while through the window in the door we could watch the customers enter. The keeping-room had its own peculiar smell, comfortable and homelike. I scarcely know how to describe it; it was a mixture of ozone, coffee, and baking bread. Out of the keeping-room lay the kitchen, with its floor of red bricks and its burnished pots and pans hung in rows along the walls. It was my grandmother’s boast that the floor was so speckless that you could eat a meal off it. Across the courtyard at the back lay the bakehouse, with its great hollow ovens and troughs in which men with naked feet trod out the dough. Grandmother had never been out of Ransby save to visit us at Pope Lane, and this rarely. Even then, after a fortnight she was glad to get back. She said that Ransby was better than London; you weren’t crowded and knew everyone you met. The streets of London were filled with stranger-windows and stranger-faces, whereas in Ransby every house was familiar and had its story.