If Winter Comes

e other hand, were being run up in as near to a day as enthusiastic developers, feverish contractors

nded to live in them, and proposed to be roomy and well cup boarded and stoutly beamed and floored in them, but who, not foreseeing restless and railwayed generations, bui

and fifty years,"

"it's never been better kept or

he drawing-room. They were entered by enormously heavy doors of oak, fitted with latches, the drawing-room up two steps, the dining room down one step and the morning room and the fourth room on the level. All were low-beamed and many-windowed with lattice windows; all were stepped into as stepping into a very quiet place, and somehow

comfortable apartment into which he can retire and envelop himself in tobacco smoke, and where he "can have his own things around him", and "have his pipes and his pictures about him", and where he can wear "an old shooting jacket and slippers",-and he loathed and detested all these phrases and the ideas they connoted. He had no "old shooting jacket" and he would have given it to the gardener if he had; and he detested wearing slippers and never did wear slippers; it was his habit to put on his boots after his bath and

; Mark admitted that. The ridiculous and trivial affair only took on a deeper significance-not apparent

urgently summoned to the sick-bed of his father, in Chovensbury. Mabel proceeded to Crawshaws. He joined her a week later, his father happily recovered. Mabel had been busy "settling things", and sh

ck groan. "Oh,

rse, den. Wh

glanced about "Who on earth's lef

em specially for you for this room. Yo

ther. He did not much like her heavy father. "No, I

do you mean, you

nge hall. Lounge hall makes me feel perfectly sick. Yo

e bit put out. "No-I'm not. But I can't s

at her attitude towards his funny idea

let's,

losed the door after them

! A vague and transient d