Just outside the station there perennially waits a low-roofed and
sanguine omnibus that under daily discouragement continues to hope that
in the long-delayed fulness of time somebody will want to be driven
somewhere. (This nobody ever does, since the distance to any house is so
small, and a porter follows with luggage on a barrow.) It carries on its
floor a quantity of fresh straw, in the manner of the stage coaches, in
which the problematic passenger, should he ever appear, will no doubt
bury his feet. On its side, just below the window that is not made to
open, it carries the legend that shows that it belongs to the Comber
Arms, a hostelry so self-effacing that it is discoverable only by the
sharpest-eyed of pilgrims. Narrow roadways, flanked by proportionately
narrower pavements, lie ribbon-like between huddled shops and
squarely-spacious Georgian houses; and an air of leisure and content,
amounting almost to stupefaction, is the moral atmosphere of the place.
On the outskirts of the town, crowning the gentle hills that lie to the
north and west, villas in acre plots, belonging to business men in the
county town some ten miles distant, "prick their Cockney ears" and are
strangely at variance with the sober gravity of the indigenous houses.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42