CHAPTER VI.
THE BLUE RIBBON The half-dozen years or so following Sir Denis's retirement were years of peace, in which he forgot for long periods, broken only by the Dowager's visits to London, his fear of losing his Nelly.
He had taken a house in Sherwood Square, where there is a space and breeziness that the fashionable districts could not possibly allow.
The square sits on top of one of the highest hills in London, and entrenches itself as a fortress against the poverty and squalor that are creeping up the hill towards it.

Around the square there are still gardens and crescents and roads of consideration, but ever dwindling in social status as one goes down the hill, till the consideration vanishes in the degradation of cheap boarding-houses and the homes of Jews of the shopkeeping classes.
Sir Denis had discovered Sherwood Square for himself, and was uncommonly proud of it.

He liked to point out to his friends that he rented a palatial mansion for what a _pied-a-terre_ in Mayfair would have cost him.

The houses had been built by wealthy merchants and professional people in the eighteenth century.

They had splendours of double doors and marble pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved mantelpieces.