The houses are set about the Green like those in a toy village.  They are of old brick, with crumpled, up-and-down roofs of deep-toned red, and tufts of stonecrop growing from the eaves.  Diamond-paned windows, half open, admit the sweet summer air; and as for the gardens in front, it would seem as if the inhabitants had nothing to do but work in them, there is such a riotous profusion of colour and bloom.  To add to the effect, there are always pots of flowers hanging from the trees, blue flax and yellow myrtle; and cages of Java sparrows and canaries singing joyously, as well they may in such a paradise.

The shops are idyllic, too, as if Nature had seized even the man of trade and made him subservient to her designs.  The general draper’s, where I fitted myself out for a day or two quite easily, is set back in a tangle of poppies and sweet peas, Madonna lilies and Canterbury bells.  The shop itself has a gay awning, and what do you think the draper has suspended from it, just as a picturesque suggestion to the passer-by?  Suggestion I call it, because I should blush to use the word advertisement in describing anything so dainty and decorative.  Well, then, garlands of shoes, if you please!  Baby bootlets of bronze; tiny ankle-ties in yellow, blue, and scarlet kid; glossy patent-leather pumps shining in the sun, with festoons of slippers at the corners, flowery slippers in imitation Berlin wool-work.  If you make this picture in your mind’s-eye, just add a window above the awning, and over the fringe of marigolds in the window-box put the draper’s wife dancing a rosy-cheeked baby.  Alas! my words are only black and white, I fear, and this picture needs a palette drenched in primary colours.

Along the street, a short distance, is the old watchmaker’s.  Set in the hedge at the gate is a glass case with Multum in Parvo painted on the woodwork.  Within, a little stand of trinkets revolves slowly; as slowly, I imagine, as the current of business in that quiet street.  The house stands a trifle back and is covered thickly with ivy, while over the entrance-door of the shop is a great round clock set in a green frame of clustering vine.  The hands pointed to one when I passed the watchmaker’s garden with its thicket of fragrant lavender and its murmuring bees; so I went in to the sign of the “Strong i’ the Arm” for some cold luncheon, determining to patronise “The Running Footman” at the very next opportunity.  Neither of these inns is starred by Baedeker, and this fact adds the last touch of enchantment to the picture.

The landlady at the “Strong i’ the Arm” stabbed me in the heart by telling me that there were no apartments to let in the village, and that she had no private sitting-room in the inn; but she speedily healed the wound by saying that I might be accommodated at one of the farm-houses in the vicinity.  Did I object to a farm-’ouse?  Then she could cheerfully recommend the Evan’s farm, only ’alf a mile away.  She ’ad understood from Miss Phoebe Evan, who sold her poultry, that they would take one lady lodger if she didn’t wish much waiting upon.