We always consider that emancipation takes place at one exact spot on the Great Western Railway; the only difficulty is that Virginia and I never agree as to which is the exact spot.

Virginia insists that the air suddenly changes just beyond Chepstow Station, where we change from the London and South Wales main line to the local train that, two or three times a day (week-days only), runs through our particular Valley, like a small boy’s toy affair.

This train, which makes up in black smoke for what it lacks of other dignity, steams out of the main line junction with an important snort and rumble; over the bridge it goes, and the stranger would imagine it was well under way. But no; it then comes to a standstill at the point where the main line and the Valley line meet, in order that the gentleman who lives—we presume—in the signal-box (but who is always standing on the railway line when we see him) may hand to our engine-driver a metal staff—some sort of a key, they tell me, which is said to unlock the single railway line. I don’t pretend to understand the process myself. I only know that our engine-driver looks lovingly at it as though it were the apple of his eye (I’ve craned my head out of the window, that’s how I know), and clasps it to his chest, until he gets to the first station on the Valley line, where he hands it over to the station-master, who, in turn, gives him another one, to which he clings just as pathetically.

In this leisurely way we proceed up the Valley.

It wouldn’t have any deep significance, but for the fact that Virginia maintains it is the first key that unlocks the imprisoned Ego within her, and sets her soul free from the trammels and shackles and cobwebs and chains, hampering, warping, and enmeshing her, that have been riveted by the blighting tendencies of London (and a lot more to the same effect). She says she feels the fetters burst directly that key is handed over, for she knows then that the train is beyond the possibility of making a mistake, and getting back on to the London main line again instead of the single pair of Valley rails.

Then it is that the air becomes fresher than ever. The primroses that grow all up the rocks, just beyond the signal-box, are very much finer than those on the junction side; the Sweet Betsey (alias red valerian) starts to drape the ledges with rosy-crimson as soon as the signalman walks back up the wooden steps to his cabin. And Virginia herself becomes a different being, though opinions are painfully divided as to whether the change is for the better or for the worse.

She says she feels just like the Lord Mayor, or the Speaker in the House of Commons, with a myrmidon going on ahead of her bearing the mace.

We just let her talk on when she gets lightheaded like this. After all, this Rod of Office which the engine-driver cherishes is what Virginia waits for through four hours of express train—six if you go by a slow one. And the spot where he receives it on the line is where she develops a beatific smile of wondrous amiability.

For me, the chains snap a little further on.

After the driver has received his Key of Office the train meanders peacefully through west country orchards, placid meadows, and tawny-gold cornfields; past grey-brown haystacks; past little cottages, each with its pig-sty and scratting hens, and a clothes-line displaying pinafores and sundry other garments only mentioned sotto voce in the paper pattern section of ladies’ papers. Small, hatless, yellow-haired children, gathering daisies or cowslips in adjoining fields, wave at us as we go by.

Then the engine braces itself for a mighty effort, and gives a business-like shriek on its whistle (this is the great exploit of the whole journey) as it plunges into a very long, dark, clattering tunnel, cut through solid rock. Here we sit in the breathless darkness for several minutes, to emerge finally upon scenery so unlike that we left behind at the entrance to the tunnel as to suggest that we had entered another country.

Gone are the cornfields, the gentle undulations, gone the farms and cottages, the hayricks and barns. Almost in sheer precipices the rocks rise up from the rushing winding river in the valley below, clothed from summit to base with forest trees. The train, now an insignificant atom on the face of Nature, puffs vigorously along a ledge cut half-way up the face of these giant hills.

From the windows on one side of the train you look down upon a world of rocks, trees and water, to the Horse Shoe bend, where the river turns and twists and doubles back on itself again. Not a house is in sight.

The windows on the other side show more grey rocks rising up out of sight, with trees growing where you would scarcely think they could find root-hold, much less food to live and thrive on. And where it is bare stone, and there are no trees, the scarred and jagged surface of the rocks—due to far-away earth-rends and more modern rock-slides—is lovingly swathed and festooned with trails of Travellers’ Joy and ivy and bryony; while ferns and foxgloves, wild strawberries and Mother of Millions flourish on the narrow ledges, and sprout out from sheltered crannies—such a mist of delicate loveliness veiling all that is grim and cold and hard.

Even the wooden posts, from which wire is stretched to fence off the railway company’s land from the adjoining woods, are entirely covered with a living mosaic of small-leaved ivy, patterned, with no two scrolls alike, in a way that human hand could never copy.

Below there is always the river, that swirls and rushes noisily at low tide over its weirs. A heron stands motionless on a grey-green moss-covered boulder near the bank. He looks up at the little train; but it is too far away to worry him. He, and a kite circling high overhead, are the only signs of life to be seen as one passes along. Yet the whole earth is teeming with small folk, furred and feathered; the rarest of butterflies are glinting over the rocks; the otter is hiding down in the river-pools; and from time to time a salmon leaps into the air, a flash, a streak of silver, and a series of eddying ripples—that is all.

This is the spot where, for me, a new life begins; where unconsciously I draw my breath with a deep intake, and suddenly feel the past slipping from me; the noise and din, the sordidness and care of the city fade into the background and become nothing more substantial than some remote nightmare.

Here in this Valley of Peace and Quietness my dreams become realities. And best of all, here God seems to lay His Hand on tired heart and tired brain; and I find myself saying, “This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing.”

We had just witnessed the presentation of the first key. As usual, Virginia and I had been arguing—no, that isn’t the right word; I never argue; I merely discuss things intelligently. At any rate, we had been exchanging views (that differed) as to the exact place where we noticed the great change come over ourselves in particular, and things in general. As we didn’t get any nearer a final settlement we appealed to Ursula, who was sitting silent, with a far-away look in her eyes, as of one engaged in bridging space and measuring the stars.

She came back to earth, however, at our question, and said she was absolutely sure the moment of her great transformation was when she got hold of a cup of proper domestic tea, as distinct from the indigestive railway variety. Indeed, for the past few minutes she had been entirely absorbed in the mental contemplation of the meal she hoped Abigail would soon be preparing. Even then she could smell the sizzling ham and the frying eggs and the buttered toast we should have on arrival.

We were in the sulphurous depths of the tunnel at the moment. Naturally I was hurt. As I said to her, I knew my board was frugal, and my viands simple, modest, unaffected and unassuming, but at least they didn’t smell like that!

Fortunately she hadn’t much time to explain what she did and what she didn’t mean, for we came out of the tunnel into the panorama of hills and silence; no one ever talks much just here, save the braying type of tourist.

Besides, there is the “Abbey” to watch for. No matter how many times you may see that, you always wait expectantly for the moment when you catch the first glimpse of the wonderful grey ruin.

The abbey-makers of the olden days not only knew how to build, but they also knew how to “place” their beautiful structures. And the setting of our Abbey is as nearly perfect as anything can be in this world.

The steep hills recede a little bit just at one bend of the river, leaving room for a broad green meadow between the water and the uprising steeps. Here the Abbey was placed: a babbling river in the foreground, dark larch-covered hills in the background. Surely it is no fanciful exaggeration to think that the beauty all around them must have influenced the men who raised that wonderful poem in stone!

I would like to take you into the Abbey and show you the beautiful views that can be seen from every ruined window, each one a framed picture in itself; the spray of oak-leaves carved on one piece of stone, the live snapdragons growing out of buttresses, the graceful spring of each slender arch, the perfect proportions of the whole building, for, despite the cruel wreckage it suffered in the past, it is still the most lovely Gothic ruin in England.

But to-day we can’t stay.

The train hurries on, through another short tunnel, over a bridge spanning the river and a talkative weir, and then into our station.

In the summer there is a good deal of bustle in this station, which is the haunt of many tourists. I am told that five out of every ten visitors are from the United States. No American thinks of “doing” England without seeing our valley, which is famous for its scenery and its ruins. Thus you always find a number of women in trim “shirt-waists,” and wearing large chiffon veils on the top of their hats at angles quite unknown to the English woman, sitting on the platform about train time, writing the usual budget of picture postcards.

But we aren’t “foreigners” (as the natives style everyone who doesn’t belong to their village). That is one of the many charms of arriving at this station. Here no one regards us merely as passengers who can’t find their luggage; or, passengers who have changed where they had no business to; or, passengers who expect the local porter to know by heart all the railway connections and times of return trains throughout the British Isles. Neither are we among the people who look suspiciously at every wagonette driver, certain that he is going to overcharge, and uncertain as to which is likely to overcharge the least. We have no anxieties concerning the truth of the advertised merits of the various hotels, and apartments to let, in the village.

We “belong.”

There is a sense of home-coming in our arrival. The porters actually rush forward to help with our luggage, and the station-master raises his cap.

Old Bob—who occupies the doubly proud position of being the only one among the fly proprietors who displays a pair of steeds attached to his vehicle, while he is also the one who usually drives what he describes as “the e-light-y”—is waiting with his wagonette (and pair, don’t forget) and a cart for the luggage.

It really is comforting to be claimed by someone at the end of a journey, if it be but the wagonette driver. I feel so solitary, such an orphan, when I chance to arrive alone at some strange place in quest of a holiday, possibly unknown to a single person but the landlady-to-be. Don’t you know the sinking feeling that comes over you as you look round upon the crowds of people, some scrambling in, and some scrambling out of the train; every face a blank so far as you are concerned? No one to trouble whether you ever get any further, or whether you remain in that jostling turmoil for ever.

You almost wish you could get into the train and go back to town again; you reflect that there at least the butcher knows you, and the people next door, and the crossing-sweeper at the corner.

You revive after having some tea, but it is possible to spend a very doleful, homesick quarter of an hour between the time you get out of the train and the time you sit down to a meal in some strange room, whose painful unlikeness to the ones you live in accentuates your loneliness.

But that never happens to us in our Valley. Before we have got out of our compartment, Abigail is already on the platform and holding a levee consisting of two porters, the signalman, the assistant engine-driver from a goods train in the siding, and old Bob’s nephew, who drives the cart. All lend a hand as she proceeds to marshal the luggage, and with a peremptory wave of her umbrella, directs its disposal.

Of course there really isn’t much luggage. That is one of the advantages of retreating to your own secluded cottage; being off the beaten track as we are, there is no necessity to take many “toilettes”—either demi or semi—or a large variety of lounge robes, or matinÉes, or boudoir negligÉes, or rest frocks, or tea-gowns, or cocoa-coats, or evening wraps built of chiffon, and really necessary, handy things of that sort. All we take with us is just a few clothes to wear.

On one occasion Virginia did bring down a long “article” (I don’t know what else to call it) composed of about ten yards of white net, embroidered here and there with large beads, an artificial rose sewn on to one corner of the curtain-like thing, a gilt-metal fringe suggestive of shoelace tags all around the edges. She couldn’t quite understand how she came by it, she said. She remembered an energetic ultra-elegant shop-assistant, somewhere, displaying it before her, with the information that it was a “slumber swirl,” and assuring her, condescendingly, that it was the very latest, and absolutely sweet, and just the thing for outdoors in the summer. Virginia said she agreed with her, she was sure; knowing her own sweet and plastic disposition, she would certainly have agreed with her; she was thankful to say she wasn’t one of those people who perpetually disagree with other people. But—she had no recollection of having attached her name and address to the wisp, much less of having paid for it! Still, the energetic damsel had sent it home—and here it was!

Ursula, after one glance at the confection, hastily turned her eyes away and announced that, for her part, she didn’t consider it—well, quite adequate!

Her sister explained that it wasn’t supposed to be worn that way; and she arranged herself with closed eyes on the sofa to show us how it would look when draped over her—head and all—as she rested in the hammock. It took a lot of adjusting so as to avoid getting some knobbly bead motif just under her ear, and to prevent the shoe-lace tags attacking the under-side of the face. And when she had at last found a spot of unembellished net on which to lay her rose-leaf cheek, she was afraid to move for fear of splitting the frail net.

Ursula merely snorted.

When next I saw the “slumber swirl,” part of it had been converted into a meat-safe of irreproachable moral character, Ursula having utilised the frame of our getting-worn-out one for the purpose.

No; our luggage is only trifling, and only consists of just what we need. Abigail takes mine and her own to Paddington in a bus, which also picks up the luggage of the other two girls en route. Individually, the details do not seem much, but I confess, when I see it dumped all together on the platform, the aggregate looks somewhat nondescript.

There will be four large hat-boxes (or five if Abigail brings more than one); anything from three to seven trunks; Abigail’s collapsible straw basket; a bundle of umbrellas and sunshades; the dog, in his travelling basket; a chip basket containing pots of mysterious seedlings Virginia has been specially raising in town (which usually get upset once or twice on the way, and have been known to turn out docks). There is sure to be a cardboard box for one of Abigail’s best Jap silk Sunday frocks that she doesn’t want to get crushed; a string bag containing Abigail’s novels and snippety weeklies, her crochet, a few oranges, two bananas, some chocolate, and whatever other refreshment she will need on the journey; a brown-paper parcel holding a few articles of wearing apparel, also belonging to Abigail, that she only remembered at the last minute, and cook did up for her.

Then Ursula is sure to bring some contribution to the larder—perhaps tomatoes and a cake. Naturally, there is our lunch basket; and I, personally, never feel complete unless I have my leather dispatch-box beside me. I also take a suit-case containing my mackintosh—in case it rains when I arrive—books and papers which I never read, knitting, and similar necessities for the journey; it is also useful as a final receptacle for oddments I omitted to pack elsewhere. Virginia and Ursula bring similar suit-cases, for similar reasons.

Sometimes Abigail springs surprises on us at the last minute. “Whatever have you there?” I asked one day, as she joined us on the Paddington platform, a jangling parcel in one hand that sounded like a badly cracked bell, and a large protrusion—silent, fortunately—embraced in the other arm.

“Oh, this is just a new zinc pail” (shaking the musical packet), “we need an extra one; and I’ve put in a little iron shovel, as I want one for my kitchen scuttle: and there’s a nutmeg grater too; the one down there is getting rusty. And this” (nodding towards her chest) “is an enamel washing-up bowl. Our big one down there leaks.”

And she proceeded serenely on her way to the accompaniment of iron shovel clink-clanging against zinc pail, with the nutmeg-grater tintinnabulating cheerfully in a higher key—and evidently pleased at the public interest she was arousing.

Not that her surprises are always so useful. On one occasion I noticed she had brought two collapsible straw baskets, but concluded she had some very special new frocks for the flower show. The porter disposed of the luggage—while Abigail was looking the bookstall over. When she returned and found both baskets missing, she rushed to the guard’s van. Soon things were being dragged out again, Abigail excitedly urging haste. The guard helped, Abigail assisting with much conversation.

Eventually she lugged one basket up to her own compartment, scorning the help of the penitent porter. As she passed my compartment, a heartrending “mee-au” came from the basket.

“What in the world—!!—!!!” I began.

“It’s only Angelina,” Abigail explained. “She hasn’t seemed well lately. I thought a change of air might do her good. Only it gave me a bit of a fright when I found they’d put her in the van, thinking she was luggage!”

(Incidentally, Angelina is my cat.)

Being my own place and not someone else’s we are going to, it occasionally happens that there are items of furnishing that need to go down, a mirror, for instance, that is too large to pack in a trunk. Strictly speaking, the railway company might be within their rights if they argued that such things could not legitimately be called passenger’s luggage; but Virginia said, with regard to the mirror—4 feet × 2—that if they objected to take it, she should tell them every woman is entitled to carry a mirror among her personal luggage.

Fortunately no one so far has objected to any of the details of our impedimenta, so long as the excess charges are promptly paid. We usually go down with the same guard. I tell him what the contraband is. He carries the parcel off majestically, assuring me that his one eye won’t leave it all the way down, no matter where the other may be focused; and he begs me to have no anxiety as to its safety. I haven’t. I know from long experience that the guards and officials on the G.W.R. have elevated politeness and courtesy from a mere duty to a fine art.

Sometimes I almost wish they wouldn’t take quite such care of our things! There was the brown pitcher, for instance. I had been wanting a very large one for fetching the water from the spring outside the cottage gate. Of course, I know you can get big enamel jugs (painted duck-egg blue, or anything else in the art line that you fancy); but the latter seems so strident, so townified, so newly-rich, so over-dressed, when you see them beside our moss-grown wooden spout, where the mountain spring splashes down into a stony hollow, among ferns and long mosses. The sturdy but humble brown pitcher tones in better with the pale yellow sand in the bottom of the hollow, the browns and greys and greens of the stones and growing things all round. The very water falls into it with a mellow musical sound, instead of the hollow tinny ring that the enamelled creature gives forth.

But I couldn’t see one in the village shop as big as I required. Ursula, however, ran against the very thing unexpectedly in town. The only difficulty was the packing, so she decided to carry it just as it was. Virginia expressed a sincere hope that she would at least tie a pale blue bow on the handle.

She got it safely as far as Paddington, but here an iron pillar suddenly ran alongside and torpedoed the pitcher—so she said—knocking a small but very business-like hole clean through its bulging side. Then the question arose: What was she to do with the remnants? The train was due to start in two minutes, so she hadn’t time to inquire for the station dust-bin.

Virginia suggested that she should try to induce the bookstall boy to accept it as payment for a packet of milk chocolate; failing that, she had better put an advertisement in the paper offering a wonderful specimen of antique Roman pottery in exchange for a sable motoring coat, or a cartload of white mice.

What she did do was to leave it tidily on the nearest seat, with the intention of bestowing sixpence on the first porter she could waylay if he would make himself responsible for its after career. But apparently every employee at Paddington Station had enlisted.

The whistle was blown, and the train started to move slowly, just as the vigilant eye of the guard fell upon the disabled crock. His face lighted up. He seized it, rushed to the moving compartment containing Ursula. “Madam,” he gasped, “you have forgotten this,” and he thrust it into her arms.

She didn’t dare try to leave it behind any more!

Then there was the fish. It was on an occasion when Virginia was coming down by herself, and thus lacked the restraining, and more practical, hand of Ursula. Now, as I have already hinted, Virginia is an intelligent girl. She can tell you exactly how many million tons of certain chemicals could be excavated from the very bottom of Vesuvius (if only they could manage to put the fire out, of course), and how, if these million tons were applied to the land in Mars, as artificial manure, the wheat crop they would produce in one year—if only you could raise their temperature a few hundred degrees, and this could easily be done if you transfer—by wireless—the heat that isn’t needed in Vesuvius to Mars (or is it the moon?), where they do want it—why, then—(where was I?)—Oh, yes, the wheat crop they would harvest per annum would be sufficient to feed the whole of the inhabitants of this planet of ours, and several others thrown in, for—I forgot how many dozen years.

Yes, she is a very bright girl, just as well informed on any other subject you like to mention—excepting fish! There she draws a woeful blank: she has no more notion how to tell fresh fish at sight than a baby!

Still, she is generous in her intentions, and as no one ever thinks of journeying to the cottage without taking something in the eatable line—it is only right to take a little present when you go to stay with friends, isn’t it?—Virginia cast about as to what she could bring. Game has no attraction—we have plenty of that. Fish, on the contrary, is a rarity. Although our river is full, we seldom see fish at the cottage, excepting a very over-due variety that a man peddles round occasionally.

So she decided on fish—alas! And hastened into the first fishmonger’s she saw and ordered a dozen pairs of soles. She maintains that wasn’t what she meant to ask for. It was oysters she wanted to bestow on me, and she went in with the definite intention of purchasing a dozen oysters. At that moment, however, her mind was somewhat pre-occupied with a scientific invention she was thinking out, whereby no woman need ever again handle a broom or carpet-sweeper or anything of that kind.

It was a simple device, consisting of a vacuum between the layers of leather on the bottom of the shoe, and some sort of a suction arrangement whereby you drew up the dust from the carpet (or wherever you walked) just by stepping on it. You would clear as you go, and instead of a person trailing dirt up and down the stairs by walking straight in from the garden and up to the top attic, they would really be giving the stair carpet what would be equal to a good brushing.

Moreover, not only would spring cleaning be banished for ever—when her invention was perfected—but your shoes would never more need mending. The dust collected in the shoe, being subject to so many cubic inches of pressure due to the person standing on top of the shoe, would become so compressed and self-adhesive as to offer a direct resistance to the friction set up between boot and alien matter trodden upon, equal to the inverse ratio of—I haven’t the faintest notion what! But I dare say you can follow her line of argument. She herself says she is always lucid and concise.

At any rate, I remember she said that it was terribly hard to be the mother of a huge family of boys, who not only trailed dust and dirt into the house at all times and seasons, but also wore out innumerable pairs of boots into the bargain. Whereupon I reminded her that neither of us need worry personally about that just yet!

She agreed, but said that did not alter her desire to benefit her day and generation, and to rid the world of “the Burden of the Broom.” And she was meditating on this, and thinking of all the leather we had wasted by letting it wear off the bottoms of our boots, when she saw the fish shop, and though she thought a dozen “oysters,” what she said was a dozen “pairs of soles”—and, of course, I would recognise that the mistake wasn’t her fault; it was entirely due to the psychological action of the subconscious something that connected soles with boots, etc.

Anyhow, the result was that she paid cheerfully for such a collection of fish as I hope I may never see again. And how happy that fishmonger must have been, when the transaction was completed, only those who got a whiff of the fish can estimate.

Virginia admitted that she thought the price seemed a lot for a dozen oysters (soles were two shillings a pound at the time), and the bag seemed heavy. Also, she confessed that it was a trifle more than she had intended to spend on a present for me at that moment, though she, being a real lady, would have been the last to mention it if I hadn’t. No, she hadn’t thought to look at what he put in; she merely told him to pack them up very securely, as she was going on a long railway journey. She didn’t know they were soles till she glanced at the bill in the train. She consoled me with the information that fish has the most wonderful phosphorescent properties, invaluable in the case of brain-fag; and she should see that I ate it all!

After a few miles of the journey the soles grew a little noisy in the rack. You don’t want to look a gift-horse in the mouth—truth to tell, I didn’t want to look at that particular gift at all. But I had to open both windows.

At our first stop, Reading, when the guard came to the door and politely inquired, “Are you ladies all right? Can I get you anything?” I asked him if he would be so good as to take charge of the big rush bag. I suggested that he could tie it on to the back buffer at the very end of the train. I assured him it was nothing that would hurt. But he only smiled, and said he had plenty of room in his own compartment; the basket would be quite safe there, no one would touch it. I could quite believe it!

When he came down the platform at Swindon he looked very pale and out of sorts, I thought. Conscience-stricken, I pressed a shilling into his hand, and begged him to get himself a good cup of tea. He said he would, and certainly seemed to have revived when next he passed.

We got it home, eventually, without Abigail detecting it—I wanted to save Virginia’s face before the handmaiden—as we took the basket, wrapped up in my mackintosh, in the wagonette with us, Abigail following behind in the luggage-cart. She did say later, however, that she wished that pedlar and his awful kippers and bloaters could be suppressed by law. He had evidently just been round, she said, and she could smell his wretched fish all the way as she drove up. We didn’t tell her what we had hidden in the old barn.

We buried them darkly at dead of night. The only soft spot we could find, that admitted of a good-sized trench being dug without much trouble, was the moist earth beside the brook in the lower orchard.

Next morning, at breakfast-time, when the small dog ran in to greet us, his nose and paws showed signs of active service as he joyfully dabbed brown mud on the front of our fresh print frocks, and waggled his tail with the air of a dog who is conscious of heroic achievements. Abigail followed him with the bacon-dish, which, in her excitement, she tried to balance on the top of the coffee-pot.

“You’d never believe what a high tide there has been in the brook!” she began. “A spring tide, I should think. It’s washed up hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of large fish on to the bank. Never saw such a thing in my life before. First I knew of it was slipping on one on the kitchen hearthrug. Dandie had brought one in—wanted me to grill it for his breakfast, I suppose! Then I found he’d carried one up to the mat outside your bedroom door, and just dropped a few others here and there about the house. So I went out to see where he got ’em from. Judging by the smell, they must have lain there for weeks. Wish I’d been here with a net at the time. I’ve never caught a live fish in my life, though I’ve often tried to fish in the pond on Peckham Rye.”

Naturally we expressed great interest, and suggested immediate cremation in the kitchener.

Later on, the handy man was decidedly sceptical. His grandfeyther had once caught a trout in that brook (only he gave long biographical, geographical and historical details, which proved that it wasn’t that brook at all); but he hadn’t a-seed any hisself a-coming down.

Abigail scornfully pointed out that high tides came up, and these fish had been washed up from the river, which is 700 feet below; and she flapped one as evidence before his astonished eyes.

Seeing is believing in our village!

To this day Abigail’s tales, to cook and co. and her friends at home, of how she goes out and catches soles as large as plaice in our own brook, and boils them for supper, equal any fish stories ever told!

But to return to the luggage and ourselves, which I left waiting at our little station.

While the luggage is being stowed into the vehicles, we take stock of the platform, that seems to fancy itself the pivot of the universe! Everybody that is going away scrambles into the train with precipitate haste, as though they were trying to catch a train on the Tube, or a sprinting motor-bus in the Strand! although they know quite well that the peaceful old engine—already twenty-five minutes behind time—won’t think of stirring again until it has had a ten minutes’ nap!

Those who have just arrived seem equally in a hurry to get somewhere else, and they try to squeeze three thick out of the small station gate—only to plant themselves in the path just outside for a long gossip with the first person they see.

There are women with empty baskets returning from market, and women seeing off friends, each carrying a huge “bookey” of flowers, built up in the approved style, from the back: first a big background rhubarb leaf, or something equally green and spacious, then some striped variegated grass—gardeners’ garters, we call it; also some southernwood—better known as Old Man’s Beard; tall flowers like foxgloves, phlox, Japanese anemones, early dahlias and sunflowers follow; the shorter stems of pinks, calceolarias, sweet williams and roses are the next in succession; finishing off with some gorgeous pansies and a very fat cabbage rose with a short stem (that persists in tumbling out), a piece of sweetbriar, and a few silver and gold everlasting flowers down low in the front. If you have a geranium in your window, etiquette demands that you add the best spray—as a special offering—to the bunch, telling your friend all about the way you got that geranium cutting, and the trouble you had to rear it.

You know the sort of complacent well-packed bunches that are the result of this combination. Not artistic, of course, according to town standards, but, all the same, they are dears; and I always feel I want every one I see.

The station itself is a flower garden. And even in the space outside, where the motor-cars await the rich, and the wagonettes and carts await the nearly-poor, primroses and violets and cowslips and bluebells grow thick on the banks.

Naturally the arrival of the train is a matter of local importance, and if you happen to be near the station about train-time you go in and sit on the platform just to see who comes or goes.

And how well everybody looks, and sturdy, and brown, after the pale anÆmic faces we have left in town! You think how happy they must all be here in the fresh air and the sunshine. So they ought to be, and so most of them could be, if only they kept a look-out for happiness, and seized all that came their way. But human nature the world over seems to love to contemplate the tragic, or at least to pity itself! The result is that every other person you meet in our village will tell you a tale of woe as highly-coloured as anything you hear in town.

“How do you do?” I inquired, last time I arrived, of a comfortable healthy-looking woman, who had just been seeing her daughter off by train. Her husband is a steady man, in regular work. She owns the cottage she lives in, and a pig, and has no difficulty in supplying the wants of her family, which are few.

“Oh, I’m not up to much, m’m,” she began. “Things is so hard nowadays, and no one gives we a bit o’ help. There’s that Jane Price, she got a pound of tea, and a hundudweight of coal, and a red flannel petticut, from the lady of the manor at Christmas, and she be a widder with on’y her children. But I on’y got some tea and a petticut (not a nice colour red neither), no coal nor nothing, and thur I’ve got he to keep as well as the children, and in course I need it wuss’n her do!”

Further along the platform I spoke to the wife of a small farmer, a healthy soul, with nothing much to worry her. But she didn’t intend to be behindhand with trouble! Other people found plenty to moan about; she wasn’t to be outdone.

“You’ve heard of the awful time I’m having with my husband? Fell down in the wood and broke his leg in four places! Suffers terrible, he does.”

I expressed sympathy, and asked how long he had been in bed.

“Oh, he isn’t in bed; can’t spare the time to lay up, with the haymaking just on. He’s cutting the five-acre field to-day. He gets about, but he has an abundation of pain at nights. Yes, you’re right. Very active he is, there’s no keeping him still. He’ll walk to his own funeral, he will.”

Actually the man had a touch of rheumatism!

Finally we are settled in the fly, piled up with the lighter luggage, while Abigail and old Bob’s nephew follow in the cart.

To the stranger who has never been in our Valley before, the drive to the Cottage is a thing of wonder; to those of us who do the journey many times in the course of the year new beauties are always revealing themselves, and the whole scene seems more lovely each time we look upon it, if that be possible.

The station is on the river level, down in the green depths of the Valley. But you cannot go many yards on level ground, as the hills on either side of the river are steep, with nothing but the narrowest footpath in places, between their precipitous sides and the fast-rushing water. In many cases the cottage-gardens on the hill-side have to be kept up with walls of stone—as one sees the vineyards built up on steep hill-sides in vine-growing districts—otherwise the rains and swollen brooks would wash the earth down, in the winter, into the river below.

The horses start the ascent as soon as they leave the station, and pass through the small village, which shows a curious medley in the way of architecture. In the wall of an old cow-house there is a Gothic window, built probably with stones taken from the ruined Abbey; all the windows of one cottage bear an ecclesiastical stamp. Before the beautiful ruin was carefully guarded as it is now, people must have gone and helped themselves as they pleased to carved stonework and any fragment that they could make use of; and thus you may find an exquisite bit of carved stone in a most ordinary three-roomed dwelling. Some of the cottages and barns may have been part of the Abbey property; at any rate one comes on architectural surprises in the most unexpected places.

But even though in this district man’s handiwork has achieved wondrous things, it is the work of Nature that claims the attention.

The Abbey seems a huge pile when you stand under its roofless walls; but once you start to ascend the hills, everything takes on new proportions. No longer are you shut in by two high green hill-walls, the higher you go the smaller become the hills that are nearest to you, as they reveal far greater giants behind them. The blue Welsh mountains rise up, still further beyond again.

Below, the river winds and loses itself, seeming to come to an abrupt end against a barrier of dark green slopes; but it evidently finds a way out, for it is seen further on in the far distance, a silver, gleaming band, still winding, and still guarded by mountains that now are tinged with the purply-blue tone that Nature uses for her distant effects.

The lanes through which we pass are miracles of loveliness, with their ferns and flowers and birds and butterflies. But I think one’s overwhelming thought is of the grandeur of the distances. One is always looking away to the far-off, to the farms and small homesteads dotted at rare intervals on far heights and among the forests; to the peaks beyond peaks; to the light playing on miles of birch and oak; to the shadowy coombes where hills drop down into other valleys.

I have always noticed, when I am bringing anyone for the first time from the station to my house, that, though I point out the roadside springs and waterfalls, the glory of the hedges, the rose-coloured honeysuckle that grows over one cottage, smothering roof, chimneys and all, the visitors do not expend so much admiration on any of this, it is always the inexplicable mystery of the hills that holds them. Every five minutes takes one higher, and reveals a further panorama. Beautiful as are the lesser things, lovely as is the old ruined Abbey, the human and the near seem to slip away from you as you look across the deep chasm where the river lies below, to the vastness on the other side. There is a power, a force born of great heights and great spaces, that cannot be explained, but is surely felt by all who have not mortgaged their soul to mammon. There was a depth of mystic meaning in the words of the shepherd poet, even in the world’s young days, when he wrote: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”

It takes you about an hour to drive up to the cottage, and by this time the lane has grown so narrow—and so bumpy!—that you marvel the horses have ever got you there at all. But when you have reached the little white gate you stand and look in silence. A new touch is added to the landscape. You are now high enough to look over the tops of some of the intervening hills, and there away beyond, between a dip in the hills, you see a gleaming band of silver, the waters of the Channel.

Some people consider no scenery perfect unless there is a railway in the foreground to take them back to town as soon as possible. Some artists always want a touch of scarlet to complete any picture. Myself, I always think a glimpse of water is needed to make a beautiful view absolutely satisfying. At my cottage I am doubly blessed! I can see the river in the Valley below, and beyond there is the Channel, towards which that river is ever hurrying.

During the drive up, the small white dog with brown ears, sits on the box seat, dividing his time between shrieking Billingsgate insults to every local dog (I blush for his manners. And he looks so refined too!) and licking old Bob’s face. Not that he has any particular affection for our driver, but he gets quite hysterical when he sees the countryside and scents the rabbits; and old Bob is the handiest recipient for his overwhelming gratitude. A few dogs trail after us through the village, telling him—and one another—what they will do when they get hold of him; but they fall back when it comes to the hill; and our own treasure looks triumphantly ahead for new dogs to revile; deluding himself with the idea that he has slain all behind him, and left their corpses in the road! Occasionally he ceases to be a bullying war-dog, and becomes almost human; then he suddenly looks round at us, wags his tail all he knows how, and gives a little whimper that plainly says, “Isn’t it good to be here again!” And we all agree.

It is good to see the hills, and the valleys, the sturdy trees, and the tender little ferns growing out of the walls. Best of all, it is good to see the small white gate, and the red-tiled roof, and the blue smoke curling up, oh, so peacefully, from the cottage chimney. It is good to see the flowers smothering the walls and the garden beds; and very good to greet one’s own furniture again, one’s own rooms, one’s own familiar things—no matter how humble they may be.

For months we have clean forgotten that the living-room window requires two thumps if it is to be got open; yet without a moment’s hesitation Ursula pulls off her gloves the moment we enter the door, makes straight for the window, and gives it the requisite couple of vigorous bangs, so as to let in the evening scent of the honeysuckle that is thick about the porch. For months, it may be, we have forgotten entirely that the lid of the biggest brown teapot has a knack of tumbling off into the teacup, unless it is held on while one pours. And yet, the moment I take up that teapot again, instinctively my hand grips the lid.

There is an indefinable spirit of welcome in all these little familiar things—so commonplace and feeble and stupid they would seem to outsiders; yet to us they imply that “we belong.” It is part of the all-pervading rest that we find among these hills, that we go on from just where we left off last time. We don’t have to start afresh, or get acquainted with the place, or learn anything new. There is a great charm in returning to familiar scenes that is missed by those who are always rushing off on some new quest. True, they may find interest in another direction; but I think with most of us—excepting when we are very young and very inexperienced—the homing instinct is strong.

I have laid my battered brain on pillows in some of the largest hotels in the world; but I have never known in any of them the peaceful rest that is to be found in the cottage bedroom, despite its sloping roof. I’m not saying that there is nothing whatever to disturb one there—all too often Mr. and Mrs. Starling (several of them) persist in building under the tiles just above my head, and the various families demand breakfast at 3.30. Yet I even get to sleep through this.

There is one thing, however, that always wakes me and calls me in a most peremptory manner to get up, and that is the return of the swallows one morning in April or May, when the sites are being chosen for the new nests under the eaves. It is such a sweet little chatter, such a bubbling over of comment and advice and reminiscence, as they get their first beakful of mud, and start to lay the foundation-stone of the nest.

What do they say? I often wonder. They seem to talk the whole time, and explain to each other the excellent residential qualities of their various positions. One thing I am sure they say—and they twitter it over and over again—I know they mean it, though I don’t understand their language; for the homing instinct is strong in them, as it is in all of Nature’s children; and as I listen to them in the early morning, I can almost hear their words, “Isn’t it good to be here again?”