Why d'you want to know?"
He paused a little. "Only to make sure that--that they had seen the car,
Sir, because with children running about, though I'm sure you're driving
particularly careful, there might be an accident. That was all, Sir. Here
are the cross-roads. You can't miss your way from now on. Thank you, Sir,
but that isn't _our_ custom, not with----"
"I beg your pardon," I said, and thrust away the British silver.
"Oh, it's quite right with the rest of 'em as a rule. Goodbye, Sir."
He retired into the armour-plated conning tower of his caste and walked
away. Evidently a butler solicitous for the honour of his house, and
interested, probably through a maid, in the nursery.
Once beyond the signposts at the cross-roads I looked back, but the
crumpled hills interlaced so jealously that I could not see where the
house had lain. When I asked its name at a cottage along the road, the fat
woman who sold sweetmeats there gave me to understand that people with
motor cars had small right to live--much less to "go about talking like
carriage folk." They were not a pleasant-mannered community.
When I retraced my route on the map that evening I was little wiser.
Hawkin's Old Farm appeared to be the survey title of the place, and the
old County Gazetteer, generally so ample, did not allude to it. The big
house of those parts was Hodnington Hall, Georgian with early Victorian
embellishments, as an atrocious steel engraving attested.
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