86 IN THE WEALD 
mates. From the fields, where they have been sheltered 
in the thick hedges, linnets, greenfinches, and yellow- 
hammers fly up to branches of a dead ash, close to 
the farm. They have much to say, for they chatter 
and warble in the most pleasant manner ; and as you 
listen you feel that life is a very pleasant thing after all. 
The farms some of which, the moated ones, have 
at one time been gentlemen's houses are very old- 
fashioned, very solid, and very comfortable. The 
great stone-paved kitchens, in past times the servants' 
halls, are cool in summer and warm in winter. Well- 
conditioned they are, surrounded by woods, fields, and 
water ; and the waters are well stocked with fish, not 
artificially. Mother Nature is most generous and wise 
in all her works, and she does her own work here, as 
it has been done from the beginning of all things, 
perfectly. 
The large cottages they are called that now 
built on the same plan as the farms, were, we think, 
at one time occupied by the headmen on the farms,, 
the bailiffs of the gentlemen who lived in the large 
houses. All the lower rooms of these cottages are 
paved with flag-stones. This answered very well for 
the generations for whom they were built ; but 
these are gone, and their ideas with them. Most of 
those stone floors now are covered with a matting of 
