’There is one thing you have on your hands which I can never quite see the necessity for,’ said Downe, with good-humoured freedom.  ’What the deuce do you want to build that new mansion for, when you have already got such an excellent house as the one you live in?’

Barnet’s face acquired a warmer shade of colour; but as the question had been idly asked by the solicitor while regarding the surrounding flocks and fields, he answered after a moment with no apparent embarrassment —

’Well, we wanted to get out of the town, you know:  the house I am living in is rather old and inconvenient.’  Mr. Downe declared that he had chosen a pretty site for the new building.  They would be able to see for miles and miles from the windows.  Was he going to give it a name?  He supposed so.

Barnet thought not.  There was no other house near that was likely to be mistaken for it.  And he did not care for a name.

‘But I think it has a name!’ Downe observed:  ’I went past—­when was it?—­this morning; and I saw something,—­“Chateau Ringdale,” I think it was, stuck up on a board!’

‘It was an idea she—­we had for a short time,’ said Barnet hastily.  ’But we have decided finally to do without a name—­at any rate such a name as that.  It must have been a week ago that you saw it.  It was taken down last Saturday . . .  Upon that matter I am firm!’ he added grimly.

Downe murmured in an unconvinced tone that he thought he had seen it yesterday.

Talking thus they drove into the town.  The street was unusually still for the hour of seven in the evening; an increasing drizzle had prevailed since the afternoon, and now formed a gauze across the yellow lamps, and trickled with a gentle rattle down the heavy roofs of stone tile, that bent the house-ridges hollow-backed with its weight, and in some instances caused the walls to bulge outwards in the upper story.  Their route took them past the little town-hall, the Black-Bull Hotel, and onward to the junction of a small street on the right, consisting of a row of those two-and-two windowed brick residences of no particular age, which are exactly alike wherever found, except in the people they contain.

‘Wait—­I’ll drive you up to your door,’ said Barnet, when Downe prepared to alight at the corner.  He thereupon turned into the narrow street, when the faces of three little girls could be discerned close to the panes of a lighted window a few yards ahead, surmounted by that of a young matron, the gaze of all four being directed eagerly up the empty street.  ‘You are a fortunate fellow, Downe,’ Barnet continued, as mother and children disappeared from the window to run to the door.  ’You must be happy if any man is.  I would give a hundred such houses as my new one to have a home like yours.’

‘Well—­yes, we get along pretty comfortably,’ replied Downe complacently.