“He should go to California,” says Amy, who has feeling reminiscences.  “He should go to the Yosemite Valley, over the road which runs through Chinese Camp and Hodgden’s.  Probably the man never saw a rough road in his life.  I doubt if there is such a thing in England.”

After half an hour’s trundling along the unfenced roads of this fine old estate, crossing ancient stone bridges, rolling through leafy groves, startling fat cattle from their browsing, getting a hat-touch from a shepherd who is leading his flocks across the fields in true pastoral style, we reach the manor-house, standing stately amid dells and dingles, pollards of fantastic growth and patches of fern and gorse.  The Boyces have returned to Paris, but nurse and the children are still at the gardener’s house, and thither we drive along the banks of a sylvan lake, beyond which the rooks are cawing about the chimneys.

The old gardener is nurse’s father, and though he is now so old that he no longer does any work, he is maintained in comfort by the family in whose service he has spent a lifetime.  Forty years of honest service in one family!  No wonder he feels that his destiny is for ever linked with that of the people who have been his masters, man and boy, for forty years.  He has a delightful little cottage with thatched roof and mullioned windows, and pretty vines rioting all over it, and in front of it a flower-garden full of early bloom.  The lilacs which grow about so profusely are not of the color of our lilacs in America, being of a rich purple; we should not know they were lilacs but for the familiar odor.

A delicious ride back to Romsey in the twilight, carrying two of the Boyce children with us.  In the evening I stroll out alone, to look at the village in the moonlight.  The streets are like narrow lanes.  The houses are very old, and for the most part dilapidated, but streets and houses are all as clean and neat as wax.  Presently I come upon the old abbey, its rugged walls and towers looming solemnly in the moonlight, and pass the parson’s house near by, all overrun with vines, thinking of Trollope again and Framley parsonage.

Before going back to the White Horse Inn I wander round the village until I find that I am lost.  The discovery is not very alarming in a place so small as this, even at night.  I resolve to turn every corner to the left, and see what will come of it.  I presently find that getting out into the country comes of it; and having crossed a bridge and come upon a silent brickyard, and seen the long road winding away into the open country, I am reminded of Oliver Twist—­or was it Pip?—­running away from home and trudging off under the stars to London.  Somehow, it seems this road must lead to London.

Turning about, but still walking at random and turning left-hand corners, I presently see the abbey tower again, and make for it.  The street through which I pass is apparently the home of the British working man.  A light burning in any house is most rare.  Occasionally a man can be seen through the odd little windows, smoking a pipe by the blaze of the fire on the hearth.  Here are the abbey windows, and now I know where I am.  Down this narrow, winding street, across the open place where Lord Palmerston stands stonily in the moonlight, and I am at the White Horse Inn again.