It Was A Very Old-Looking, Long, Low Red-Brick Building, With A Verandah In Front, And Being Well Within The Grounds, Sheltered By Old Oak, Elm, Ash And Beech Trees, Could Hardly Be Seen From The Road.

The lawns and gardens were large, and behind them were two good-sized grass fields.

Within the domain one had the feeling that he was far away in the country in one of its haunts of ancient peace, and yet all round it, outside of its old hedges and rows of elms, the ground had been built over, mostly with good-sized brick houses standing in their own gardens. It was a favourite suburb with well-to-do persons in the city, rents were high and the builders had long been coveting and trying to get possession of all this land which was "doing no good," in a district where haunts of ancients peace were distinctly out of place and not wanted. But the owner (aged ninety-eight) refused to sell.

Not only the builders, but his own sons and sons' sons had represented to him that the rent he was getting for this property was nothing but an old song compared to what it would bring in, if he would let it on a long building lease. There was room there for thirty or forty good houses with big gardens. And his answer invariably was: "It shan't be touched! I was born in that house, and though I'm too old ever to go and see it again, it must not be pulled down - not a brick of it, not a tree cut, while I'm alive.

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