io 4 A KENTISH PARISH 



tap, he can carry his custom elsewhere. At all events, 

 the Squire does his duty by him so far in showing what 

 ale ought to be, when he is invited to the hospitality of 

 Oakenhurst Place, at a harvest-home or any entertain- 

 ment of the kind. The Squire is an excellent landlord, 

 though he might be even a better one were he to attend 

 more closely to the business of his properties. Perhaps 

 he is hardly the less popular that he holds himself apart, 

 since it is from reserve and want of readiness far more 

 than from pride. He is getting on for the three- 

 score years and ten, and for the forty years since 

 he succeeded to an uncle and sold out of the Guards, 

 he has been settled in solitude in the great house. 

 As it happens, for three generations, and for 

 nearly ninety years, the Squires of Oakenhurst have 

 been bachelors. So that there is rather a depressing 

 absence of sweetness and light in the great rooms of the 

 old Elizabethan house. Here and there a modern 

 easy chair, or a luxurious lounging sofa, have been 

 introduced among the massive furniture that looks as 

 if it would last to doomsday. But the heavy Turkey 

 carpets have taken the tinge of the black oak panelling, 

 and they are never replaced till they are frayed into 

 tatters, owing simply to procrastination, not to parsi- 

 mony. 



In anything that falls in with his personal tastes or 

 his stately ideas of the necessities of his position, 

 Squire Godwin is magnificent. Although he seldom 

 hunts of late years, since he has been feeling twinges of 

 rheumatism, save when the hounds are drawing his 



