There were a few widows with flocks of daughters, and on the outskirts were several bigger houses--mostly houses which had been there before the garden city was planted.

One of them was brand-new, a staring villa with sham-antique timbering, stuck on the top of a hill among raw gardens.

It belonged to a man called Moxon Ivery, who was a kind of academic pacificist and a great god in the place.

Another, a quiet Georgian manor house, was owned by a London publisher, an ardent Liberal whose particular branch of business compelled him to keep in touch with the new movements.

I used to see him hurrying to the station swinging a little black bag and returning at night with the fish for dinner.
I soon got to know a surprising lot of people, and they were the rummiest birds you can imagine.