10 IDLEIIURST: 



the dwellings of the practitioner and the attorney 

 mixed with real shops possessing plate-glass 

 windows and enamelled-iron advertisements. Here 

 a passage turns to the left, leading to a lych-gate 

 and the oak-shingled spire of the church rising 

 beyond two vast yews. A pathway flagged with 

 old tombstones winds through the churchyard to 

 a wicket in a box-hedge ; and by the wicket I 

 enter the Rectory garden in search of the Rector. 

 The garden is in close touch with the village, as is 

 fitting ; not like mine, swept in every wind by smells 

 of firs or clover, or in dead calms breathing its own 

 sweetness : here on malting days comes the admir- 

 able aroma of the brewery ; the cottages in Mill 

 Lane send their saecular reek of wood-smoke and 

 soaped linen ; with certain winds the dusty smell 

 of meal floats from the little mill that endlessly 

 thumps in the bottom by the brook. Here one can 

 tell whose chimney needs the holly-bush most : at 

 warm noons a hundred dinners pervade the walks, 

 not always altogether unsuitably hints of pork and 

 greens and onions, the generous blend of the cabbage- 

 nets in the copper. All this speaks of human 

 interests, and is very proper to a priest's close : the 

 Rector himself, I believe, prefers it to all the cloves 

 and mignonette that his wife tends. 



