And there were several decent couples taking the air like house-holders of an evening all the world Over.

Most of these last were Jimson's friends, to whom he introduced me.

They were his own class--modest folk, who sought for a coloured background to their prosaic city lives and found it in this odd settlement.
At supper I was initiated into the peculiar merits of Biggleswick.
'It is one great laboratory of thought,' said Mrs Jimson.

'It is glorious to feel that you are living among the eager, vital people who are at the head of all the newest movements, and that the intellectual history of England is being made in our studies and gardens.

The war to us seems a remote and secondary affair.