However, nothing in the general aspect and mental attitude of the village had altered very much since the early thirties, except the church.  That from a mere ruin, had under John Walden’s incumbency become a gem of architecture, so unique and perfect as to be the wonder and admiration of all who beheld it, and whereas in the early Victorian reign a few people stopped at Riversford because it was a county town and because there was an inn there where they could put up their horses, so a few people now went to St. Rest, because there was a church there worth looking at.  They came by train to Riversford, where the railway line stopped, and then took carriage or cycled the seven miles between that town and St. Rest to see the church; and having seen it, promptly went back again.  For one of the great charms of the little village hidden under the hills was that no tourist could stay a night in it, unless he or she took one spare room—­there was only one—­at the small public-house which sneaked away up round a corner of the street under an archway of ivy, and pushed its old gables through the dark enshrouding leaves with a half-surprised, half-propitiatory air, as though somewhat ashamed of its own existence.  With the exception of this one room in this one public-house, there was no accommodation for visitors.  Never will the rash cyclist who ventured once to appeal to the sexton’s wife for rooms in her cottage, forget the brusqueness of his reception: 

“Rooms!” And Mrs. Frost, setting her arms well akimbo, surveyed the enquirer scornfully through an open doorway, rendered doubly inviting by the wealth of roses clambering round it.  “Be off, young man!  Where was you a-comin’ to?  D’ye think a woman wi’ fifteen great boys and girls in an’ out of the ’ouse all day, ‘as rooms for payin’ guests!” And here Mrs. Frost, snorting at the air in irrepressible disdain, actually snapped her fingers in her would-be lodger’s face.  “Rooms indeed!  Go to Brighting!”

Whereupon the abashed wheelman went,—­whether to Brighton, as the irate lady suggested, or to a warmer place unmentionable history sayeth not.  But St. Rest remained, as its name implied, restful,—­ and the barbaric yell of the cheap tripper, together with the equally barbaric scream of the cheap tripper’s ‘young lady’ echoed chiefly through modernised and vulgarised Riversford, where there were tea-rooms and stuffy eating-houses and bad open-air concerts, such as trippers and their ‘ladies’ delight in,—­and seldom disturbed the tranquil charm of the tiny mediaeval village dear to a certain few scholars, poets and antiquarians who, through John Walden, had gradually become acquainted with this ‘priceless bit’ as they termed it, of real ‘old’ England and who almost feared to mention its existence even in a whisper, lest it should be ’swarmed over’ by enquiring Yankees, searching for those everlasting ancestors who all managed so cleverly to cross the sea together in one boat, the Mayflower.