“You read and see, my son,” answered Mr Morgan. “Shelley could not pass himself off as an old man, though you know he did once claim to be eighty-nine, and Jeremiah would not have pretended to be thirty. That is only my opinion. I prefer the prophet, like Ann.” Mr Torrance muttered that anyone who preferred Jeremiah to Shelley had no right to an opinion. It was just like Mr Torrance. He was always saying foolish things and fairly often doing them, and yet we felt, and Mr Morgan once declared, that he had in him the imperishable fire of a divine, mysterious wisdom. After walking the full length of the Abbey Road, where he lived, to discover him smiling in his dark study, was sufficient proof that he had a wisdom past understanding. Abbey Road was over two miles long. At its south end was a double signboard, pointing north “To London,” south “To Forden, Field, and Cowmore”; at its north end it ran into pure London. Every year the horse-chestnut branches had to be shortened in May because their new leaf smothered the signboard. As if anyone who had reached that point could wish to be directed to London! Almost as few could wish to know the way in order to avoid it. But the horse-chestnut had to suffer. It was fortunate in not being cut down altogether and carried away. The cemetery saved it. The acute angle between the Abbey Road and another was filled by a large new cemetery, and the tree was the first of a long line within its railings. Even had the signboard been on the other side of the road it would have been as badly off among the tall thorns and stunted elms of the hedges. Behind this hedge was a waste, wet field, grazed over by a sad horse or two all through the year; for on account partly of the cemetery, partly of the factory which manufactured nobody quite knew what except stench, this field could not be let or sold. Along its far side ran a river which had no sooner begun to rejoice in its freedom to make rush and reed at pleasure on the border of the field than it found itself at the walls of the factory. Northward, past the cemetery and the factory, began the houses of Abbey Road, first a new house, occupied but with a deserted though not wild garden, and next to it a twin house, left empty. Then followed a sluttery of a few pairs or blocks of small houses, also new, on both sides of the road--new and yet old, with the faces of children who are smeared, soiled, and doomed, at two. They bordered on the old inn, “The Woodman’s Arms,” formerly the first house, having a large kitchen garden, and masses of dahlias and sunflowers behind. It lay back a good space from the road, and this space was gravel up to the porch, and in the middle of it stood a stone drinking trough. Often a Gypsy’s cart and a couple of long dogs panting in the sun were to be seen outside, helping the inn to a country look, a little dingy and decidedly private and homely, so that what with the distance between the road