There was one of Sophia’s favourite trees (she had twelve or so), a little white hawthorn twisted into a shape suggesting a true-lover’s knot; here was her tall queen-beech overlooking the square white dignity of Wrenwood House standing on its hillside; and here the first one to put on leaves every year of all the trees on the Heath; a big chestnut standing in one of the gardens in the Vale.

There were the two chains of ponds, with their attendant swans, ducks, purple water plants, and gulls in the winter; their swimming dogs and fishing boys, and boys with boats in the summer.

There was the big silver willow tree which Sophia called to herself the Mandarin; it stood alone in a hollow amid wide spaces of short grass, and its leaves lingered until far into the winter. She had seen them hanging with twisted tips in the dull light of a December day.

She and Celia took much pride in Enbury Village and the Heath. They often went for walks together, on which they would survey the landscape and clutch at one another, gasp, make sounds of dismay and even enquire of workmen whether they were going to cut down that old elm, or build flats on the site where a Queen Anne or Regency house had stood.

They had been particularly upset by the conversion into flats of one of the most beautiful and superbly situated houses in Enbury Heath.

This was the Judge’s House, which stood next to the Turpin Arms on the airy summit, in a walled garden. It was called the Judge’s House because, though it was only some hundred and fifty years old, another house had once stood upon its site whence the local authorities of that day were said to have administered justice during the Great Plague.

The Judge’s House was too big, alas, for one person to wish to make it a home.

Its rooms were large, and beautifully shaped as a theme by Mozart, and they looked out upon an old garden full of solitude and shade, but they were not convenient. The house had been built when Enbury Village was as quiet as a village in Herefordshire; but now motorcycles roared past it and persons parked their cars outside it in order to be close to the Turpin Arms, beer and gaiety, and it could not be described as quiet. Also, it was not in good repair and, as in the case of most old houses, bits frequently fell off it.

Nothing outrageous had been done to it. The house was allowed to stand. It was redecorated, and central heating was installed, and three oddly shaped but distinctive and expensive flats were constructed from its rooms.

Sophia and Celia were indignant about this, but had to admit that they could think of no other satisfactory fate for the beautiful Judge’s House, which had lingered too long on the surface of the earth, and must now earn a living in its extreme old age or give back its site to Progress, and die.