“But you ought to have,” said he; “you ought to have an established church.”

“You may be sure we’ll have it,” said Jone, “as soon as we agree as to which one it ought to be.”

Letter Number Seven

CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE

Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Poplington asked us if we would not like to walk over to a ruined abbey about four miles away, which he said was very interesting.  It seemed to me that four miles there and four miles back was a pretty long walk, but I wanted to see the abbey, and I wasn’t going to let him think that a young American woman couldn’t walk as far as an elderly English gentleman; so I agreed and so did Jone.  The abbey is a wonderful place, and I never thought of being tired while wandering in the rooms and in the garden, where the old monks used to live and preach, and give food to the poor, and keep house without women—­which was pious enough, but must have been untidy.  But the thing that surprised me the most was what Mr. Poplington told us about the age of the place.  It was not built all at once, and it’s part ancient and part modern, and you needn’t wonder, madam, that I was astonished when he said that the part called modern was finished just three years before America was discovered.  When I heard that I seemed to shrivel up as if my country was a new-born babe alongside of a bearded patriarch; but I didn’t stay shrivelled long, for it can’t be denied that a new-born babe has a good deal more to look forward to than a patriarch has.

[Illustration:  AT THE ABBEY]

It is amazing how many things in this part of the country we’d never have thought of if it hadn’t been for Mr. Poplington.  At dinner he told us about Exmoor and the Lorna Doone country, and the wild deer hunting that can be had nowhere else in England, and lots of other things that made me feel we must be up and doing if we wanted to see all we ought to see before we left Chedcombe.  When I went upstairs I said to Jone that Mr. Poplington was a very different man from what I thought he was.

“He’s just as nice as he can be, and I’m going to charge him for his room and his meals and for everything he’s had.”

Jone laughed, and asked me if that was the way I showed people I liked them.

“We intended to humble him by not charging him anything,” I said, “and make him feel he had been depending on our bounty; but now I wouldn’t hurt his feelings for the world, and I’ll make out his bill in the morning myself.  Women always do that sort of thing in England.”

As you asked me, madam, to tell you everything that happened on our travels, I’ll go on about Mr. Poplington.  After breakfast on Monday morning he went over to the inn, and said he would come back and pack up his things; but when he did come back he told us that those coach-and-four people had determined not to leave Chedcombe that day, but was going to stay and look at the sights in the neighborhood, and that they would want the room for that night.  He said this had made him very angry, because they had no right to change their minds that way after having made definite arrangements in which other people besides themselves was concerned; and he had said so very plainly to the gentleman who seemed to be at the head of the party.