The Jimsons were a great help, for they were popular and had a nodding acquaintance with most of the inhabitants.

They regarded me as a meritorious aspirant towards a higher life, and I was paraded before their friends with the suggestion of a vivid, if Philistine, past.

If I had any gift for writing, I would make a book about the inhabitants of Biggleswick.

About half were respectable citizens who came there for country air and low rates, but even these had a touch of queerness and had picked up the jargon of the place.

The younger men were mostly Government clerks or writers or artists.