Nothing to remind him?

It made no difference whether the Abbey towers and the North Ride chimneys were visible or invisible; no screen of trees, whether leafless as now or carrying the full weight of foliage, could really screen them from him; they were inside him, together with all that they had once signified, a part of himself.  If he did not look at them with introspective eyes, if he ignored their existence, if he succeeded in not thinking of them, there was always something else, inside him or outside him, to carry his thoughts back into the black bad time.

At this moment it was the Orphanage, with its wet red roofs and dripping white verandas.  His road took him close in front of it—­a lengthy stretch of building composed of a central block that contained the hall and schoolrooms, and two lesser and lower blocks connected by cloisters.  He glanced at these blocks—­long and low, only a ground floor and an upper story—­and noticed the veranda and broad balconies.  The girls slept here, as Mavis had told him; the younger in one block and the older in the other block.  The whole institution had an air of old-established order and unceasing care; all the paint was new and clean; the gardens and terraces, with hedges and shrubs that had grown high and thick, were beautifully kept; not a weed showed in borders or paths; the copper bell in the belfry turret was so well polished that it seemed to shine, even though no glint of sunlight touched it.  As he rode by he heard the sound of children’s voices, and, raising himself in his stirrups, looked over the clipped yew hedge that guarded the lower garden from the roadway.  A dozen or fifteen small blue-cloaks were romping joyously under one of the verandas, and perhaps twenty of the bigger blue-cloaks were soberly parading two by two in a cloister.

Nothing carried him back so promptly and surely as the sight of these blue-cloaked girls, and scarcely a day ever passed without his seeing them.  Two by two they were incessantly tramping the roads for miles round.  He could not walk, ride, or drive without meeting them.  When he heard their footsteps and knew that they were coming marching by Vine-Pits, he turned his back to the office window, or went into the depths of granary or stable.  He had hated that day when Mavis brought them off the road and into the heart of his home.

With the sound of their shrill cries and merry laughter lingering in his ears he rode on.

What a hideous and damnable mockery!  This was the monument of that good kind man, the late Mr. Barradine.  Every red tile, every dab of white paint, every square inch of clean gravel, gave substance and solidity to the lasting fame of that dear sweet gentleman.  Visitors to the neighborhood always stopped their carriages or motor cars outside the Orphanage gates, questioned and gaped, sent in their cards, begged for permission to go all over it.  Inside, no doubt they admired the rows of clean white beds, some of