I am sure the old lady was right when she said it was the most beautiful part of England.  The first day we was here we carried an umbrella as we walked through all this verdant loveliness, but yesterday morning we went to the village and bought a couple of thin mackintoshes, which will save us a lot of trouble opening and shutting umbrellas.

When we got out at the Chedcombe station we found a man there with a little carriage he called a fly, who said he had been sent to take us to our house.  There was also a van to carry our baggage.  We drove entirely through the village, which looked to me as if a bit of the Middle Ages had been turned up by the plough, and on the other edge of it there was our house, and on the doorstep stood a lady, with a smiling eye and an umbrella, and who turned out to be our landlady.  Back of her was two other females, one of them looking like a minister’s wife, while the other one I knew to be a servant-maid, by her cap.

[Illustration:  “THAT WAS OUR HOUSE”]

The lady, whose name was Mrs. Shutterfield, shook hands with us and seemed very glad to see us, and the minister’s wife took our hand bags from us and told the men where to carry our trunks.  Mrs. Shutterfield took us into a little parlor on one side of the hall, and then we three sat down, and I must say I was so busy looking at the queer, delightful room, with everything in it—­chairs, tables, carpets, walls, pictures, and flower-vases—­all belonging to a bygone epoch, though perfectly fresh, as if just made, that I could scarcely pay attention to what the lady said.  But I listened enough to know that Mrs. Shutterfield told us that she had taken the liberty of engaging for us two most excellent servants, who had lived in the house before it had been let to lodgers, and who, she was quite sure, would suit us very well, though, of course, we were at liberty to do what we pleased about engaging them.  The one that I took for the minister’s wife was a combination of cook and housekeeper, by the name of Miss Pondar, and the other was a maid in general, named Hannah.  When the lady mentioned two servants it took me a little aback, for we had not expected to have more than one, but when she mentioned the wages, and I found that both put together did not cost as much as a very poor cook would expect in America, and when I remembered we as now at work socially booming ourselves, and that it wouldn’t do to let this lady think that we had not been accustomed to varieties of servants, I spoke up and said we would engage the two estimable women she recommended, and was much obliged to her for getting them.