On the far side of the valley on the private golf course at Nunspardon Manor there would be Mr George Lacklander, doing a solitary round with a glance (thought the gossip-loving Nurse Kettle) across the valley at Mrs Cartarette. Lacklander’s son, Dr Mark, would be shown with his black bag in his hand and a stork, perhaps, quaintly flying overhead. And to complete, as it were, the gentry, there would be old Lady Lacklander big-bottomed on a sketching stool and her husband, Sir Harold, on a bed of sickness, alas, in his great room, the roof of which, after the manner of pictorial maps, had been removed to display him.

In the map it would be demonstrated how Watt’s Lane, wandering to the right and bending back again, neatly divided the gentry from what Nurse Kettle called the ‘ordinary folk.’ To the west lay the Danberry-Phinn, the Syce, the Cartarette and above all the Lacklander demesnes. Neatly disposed along the east margin of Watt’s Lane were five conscientiously preserved thatched cottages, the village shop and, across Monk’s Bridge, the church and rectory and the Boy and Donkey.

And that was all. No Pulls-In for Carmen, no Olde Bunne Shoppes (which Nurse Kettle had learned to despise), no spurious half-timbering, marred the perfection of Swevenings. Nurse Kettle, bringing her panting friends up to the top of Watt’s Hill, would point with her little finger at the valley and observe triumphantly: ‘Where every prospect pleases,’ without completing the quotation, because in Swevenings not even Man was Vile.

With a look of pleasure on her shining and kindly face she mounted her bicycle and began to coast down Watt’s Lane. Hedges and trees flew by. The road surface improved and on her left appeared the quickset hedge of Jacob’s Cottage. From the far side came the voice of Mr Octavius Danberry-Phinn.

‘Adorable!’ Mr Danberry-Phinn was saying. ‘Queen of Delight! Fish!’ He was answered by the trill of feline voices.

Nurse Kettle turned to the footpath, dexterously backpedalled, wobbled uncouthly and brought herself to anchor at Mr Danberry-Phinn’s gate.

‘Good evening,’ she said, clinging to the gate and retaining her seat. She looked through the entrance cut in the deep hedge. There was Mr Danberry-Phinn in his Elizabethan garden giving supper to his cats. In Swevenings, Mr Phinn (he allowed his nearer acquaintances to neglect the hyphen) was generally considered to be more than a little eccentric, but Nurse Kettle was used to him and didn’t find him at all disconcerting. He wore a smoking-cap, tasselled, embroidered with beads; and falling to pieces. On top of this was perched a pair of ready-made reading-glasses which he now removed and gaily waved at her.

‘You appear,’ he said, ‘like some exotic deity mounted on an engine quaintly devised by Inigo Jones. Good evening to you, Nurse Kettle. Pray, what has become of your automobile?’