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Matilda and Jane Tebbs were the elderly orphans of a late vicar, and still considered the parish and community of Tadpool their special charge. Miss Jane was organist and Sunday school superintendent; Miss Tebbs held mothers' meetings and controlled the maternity basket and funds.
Here resided Edward Shafto, late Fellow of St. John's, Oxford, his wife Lucilla, and his son Douglas. Ten years previously the family had descended on Tadpool as from the skies or as a heavy stone cast into some quiet mill pond. No one in the neighbourhood could discover anything about them although Jane Tebbs's exertions in the matter were admittedly prodigious and unwearied.
There was a number of young people on board the Blankshire, and since the good old days of Tadpool Shafto had never enjoyed himself so thoroughly. It was the first time since he had arrived at man's estate that he had been associated with girls of his own class.
If Tadpool was held at arm's length by Edward Shafto, the community had no difficulty in making acquaintance with his consort, a pretty vivacious lady who accepted all invitations, and herself gave tennis parties, bridge parties, luncheons and teas.
Highfield Cottage was old, two-storied and solid; elsewhere than Tadpool it might have ventured to pose as a villa residence, but Tadpool, a fine, sixteenth century, self-respecting and historical village, tolerated no villas. If such abodes ventured to arise, they sprouted timidly in the fields beyond its boundaries. Moreover, the age and history of Highfield Cottage were too widely known for any change of name. The cottage was connected with the high road by a prim little garden and a red-tiled footpath; eight long narrow windows commanded a satisfactory outlook including Littlecote Hall a square white mansion withdrawn in dignified retirement behind elms and beeches, in age the contemporary of its humbler vis-
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