Frank also rendered me a great and unforeseen service he took me to see his friends the Brodricks at Merton .sx The Warden and he very shortly went out together to the garden , and I was left to a long tte--tte with the Warden's reigning niece , Edith Brodrick .sx She knew the Duckworths intimately and had already heard of me .sx I was unaware of this , and as we talked on and on in the falling dusk she made point after point so near the heart of my mystery that I began to feel myself in the hands of a Wise Woman , who knew the Future and could use magic arts .sx Time only confirmed this feeling no one in the end gave me more unexpected or more practical help .sx My recollection of the winter which followed is that it was long drawn out and distracting .sx I was living in two worlds at once the present which was prosaic , and the future which was obscure and difficult .sx My contemporaries at the Bar were once more attending meetings in Trafalgar Square , and this time they were called upon to serve as Special Constables .sx I could not do that for I was not now `resident in London' , but I went to the Holborn Town Hall with Herbert Chitty and Ernest Pollock , who were accepted and sworn in .sx The scene was one for a Shakespearian play .sx The crowd stood close in front of the magistrates where they sat at their long table , and the books for the oath were handed to the recruits as batch after batch answered to their names .sx There was a great crush and some confusion 'Mr .sx Ernest Pollock' was called , but the attendant could not distinguish him from those around .sx `Come , come' , said old Mr. Pownall , the Chairman of the Bench , `don't you know the Pollock face ?sx ' He drew his hand slowly down his own jaw and beyond it Mr. Pollock was instantly recognised and the merriment was great .sx I was busy at this time with a scheme for amending the settlements of Sir Edward Poore , Mr. Chilton's cousin , who had gone to live in Australia some years before , and had allowed his affairs at home to get into a tangle .sx I also joined the staff of `The Reports' a new series intended to rival the official Law Reports :sx and on them I spent a good deal of weary time in Court .sx with little profit it seemed to be very seldom that a really new case arose , and even then it was generally a hair too small to be worth splitting for future use .sx The rest of my work was for the most part conveyancing perhaps the most impersonal of all occupations .sx My real existence was very different it was a kind of Secret Service , an adventure in which success and failure , even life and death , depended on a patient and concealed diplomacy .sx Fortunately for me there were many who knew or suspected my errand , and they were all astonishingly ready to shelter and en-courage me .sx Among these were now Lord and Lady Midleton , the parents of my friend at Merton .sx Lady Midleton was a grand-daughter of one of Nelson's captains at Trafalgar , and was as absolute in her own sphere as he could ever have been on the quarter-deck of the Neptune .sx When she invited me to stay at Peperharrow I felt that no reply could be more appropriate than a silent salute .sx Her husband , George Brodrick's elder brother , was half blind , but refused to acknowledge the fact as in any way a hindrance to his activity .sx I travelled with him occasion-ally to London , and found him always genial and entertaining , until he got out at Vauxhall .sx Then as the train moved away with me I used to watch him nervously while he made boldly for the staircase down to the street .sx My fears were justified there came a day when he missed the top step , just as I was losing sight of him .sx All that I could be sure of was that he had fallen , and he was a massively built man .sx When I reached Waterloo I telegraphed at once to Eaton Square to inquire after his health and was relieved to hear later that he had fallen only a few steps on to the neck of a sufficiently stalwart porter , and was none the worse .sx Shortly after this I was myself disabled I had been lamed in a football match and an operation was thought necessary .sx By the time I was able to walk again the Duckworth family had migrated to their house in Bryanston Square for the season , and I made haste to call on them .sx The house seemed to be full of a great number of people , all related to one another , and I felt likea foreigner who did not understand the customs , politics or tongue of the country he was visiting .sx But I persevered , and was allowed to persevere :sx I lunched , I dined , I attended evening parties , and became better acquainted with the family circle .sx One evening , though I cannot date it exactly , gave me the right to add a new and authentic story to the great collection of the Brodrick Legends .sx Mr. Duckworth , who loved new scientific inventions , had that evening provided , by way of a side-show for his guests , a gramophone which was to be exhibited in a back drawing-room .sx After dinner and before the evening party had begun to arrive , we were brought into this room , and the Warden of Merton was asked to speak into the receiver of the instrument , and then to listen to the reproduction of his words .sx He uttered a short but impressive harangue in his most characteristic manner , and put the head-phone to his ear :sx a look of ingenuous astonishment came over his face .sx `I declare the instrument has imparted a tone of bombastic pedantry to all that .sx I said' .sx In the years that were coming I was to meet the Warden more often and become more and more attached to him .sx One September , when I was staying with the Frank Coltman at Lorbottle in Northumberland , he offered himself as a guest for two or three days on his way south from Scotland .sx It was , he told us at dinner , a great day for him , for this was the three hundred and sixty-fifth house that was now open to him at his own request :sx so that he could if he pleased stay at a different friend's house every night for a whole year .sx Then when the ladies had left for the drawing-room our host and he discussed the political gossip of the day .sx Mr. Coltman opined that it was hardly the thing for Mr. Gladstone , as Prime Minister , to accept the loan of a seaside house from Mr. Colman , a mustard-manufacturer whom he did not know personally .sx `My dear Frank' , said the Warden impressively :sx `the fact is that Mr. Gladstone has no sense of personal dignity whatever :sx I believe that if you were to invite him here to-morrow , he would accept in a moment without a thought of what he was doing' .sx When I heard this I recognised real gold :sx I felt like the digger who has come on a nugget and cannot be easy until he has safely banked it .sx I excused myself to my host , and slipped away to the drawing-room where I laid my treasure before a delighted audience , and secured my own title to it .sx But this was later I must turn back to the opening of 1888 .sx After I had stayed at Littleton with nearly all the members of the Duckworth family in succession , the time came near when they would be returning to Somerset , and the vital question of Lynton and the autumn had not been settled .sx It could hardly be even discussed in a London house full of eyes and ears and echoes and interruptions .sx But in the early days of June I heard suddenly from Miss Brodrick that she was making a party at Merton for Commemoration , and had asked two of her Duckworth friends to join it .sx My brother and sister were to stay with the Brights for the same occasion , so that I had good enough reason to be there myself .sx I went to Oxford at once and called at Merton .sx Miss Brodrick's diplomacy was masterly and the Warden was led to agree with serious innocence that the 'Varsity Ball would be a very proper way of spending one evening of the festive week .sx So on that one evening we danced in the New Schools :sx every hour was memorable , and I went to my room at Sparrow-chirp with a feeling that my plans for the autumn were no longer so indefinite as they had been for many months past .sx The rest of the year seems to have been full of weddings .sx May Duckworth was married to Harry Olivier , May Powell to Thackeray Turner , Robert Cholmeley to Roberta Darling .sx Then when August came , the story of last year began to repeat itself , but with advantages .sx Milly and I , as before , joined the Chiltons' train at Woking :sx Margaret , as before , was waiting for us on the Yeovil platform :sx as before our convoy of dogs , cats , horses , maids , and guests went in procession across the moor to Mount Sinai .sx The new event , the point of new departure , was the meeting of two of the guests in the hall next morning at the unusual hour of eight-fifteen and their expedition to the Valley of .sx Rocks .sx They returned to breakfast at ten o'clock , and passed the morning in telegraphing to all who had the right to hear of their adventures .sx A week later they left and each in turn took the other home :sx it fell out appropriately enough that during our stay at Addle-stone my sister Milly became engaged to be married .sx In October we met the Chiltons and Brodricks at Orchardleigh .sx In November we stayed at Merton for my brother's wedding .sx On the last day of the year in Addlestone Church I gave away my sister to Tom Chitty .sx So `the children' had both outrun me at last .sx Chapter X V .sx Mary Coleridge and Robert Bridges .sx Sir Henry de Marland when he built the little Parish Church of Orchardleigh in the thirteenth century made an accurate forecast of the needs of those who were to come after him .sx When I first saw it , more than six hundred years later , it had probably never once been filled to its full capacity , for the Parish was always simply the Park , and the parishioners were the Squire's family and dependants , seldom more than fifty or sixty in all .sx Thursday the 15th of August 1 889 was therefore a notable day in the record :sx the church that morning provided seats for a hundred and twenty or even a hundred and twenty-one , for an aged retainer , Mrs. Wren , was finally given a chair in the old oak pulpit , and from there enjoyed ( as Uncle Joseph Hardcastle said ) `an excellent bird's-eye view' .sx The arrangements for the whole day were delightfully oldfashioned perhaps amusingly so from the point of view of to-day .sx To keep up the exogamous tradition , John Mitchell and I had been sent to pass the night before the wedding day at the parsonage of Lullington on the adjoining hill , and in the morning at the appointed time we walked down the slope and along the lakeside to church through a faint drizzle of the kind called by shepherds `the Pride of the Morning' , and said to be the prelude to fine weather .sx The saying was in this case justified , and when my wife and I left the church at the end of the ceremony we stepped out into a warm summer's day .sx We also met anoverwhelming storm of rice , hurled by enthusiastic tenants , and came away with some discomfort the paper confetti of a later time would have been more untidy , but not so painful to the eyes in the literal sense .sx In another detail change had already taken effect the `wedding breakfast' was by this time a thing of the past .sx