Served him right, Dorward told me in confidence. You
must come and have lunch with me. There's only Lady Landells. I can't
afford to live in the big place. Huge affair with Doric portico and all
that, don't you know. It's let to Lord Middlesborough, the shipping man.
I live at Malford Lodge. Quite a jolly little place I've made of it.
Suits me better than that great gaunt Georgian pile. You'd better walk
down with me this morning and stop to lunch."
Mark, who was by now growing tired of his own company in the guest-room,
accepted Sir Charles' invitation with alacrity; and they walked down
from the Abbey to the village of Malford, which was situated at the
confluence of the Mall and the Nodder, two diminutive tributaries of the
Wey, which itself is not a mighty stream.
"A rather charming village, don't you think?" said Sir Charles, pointing
with his tasselled cane to a particularly attractive rose-hung cottage.
"It was lucky that the railway missed us by a couple of miles; we should
have been festering with tin bungalows by now on any available land,
which means on any land that doesn't belong to me. I don't offer to show
you the church, because I never enter it."
Mark had paused as a matter of course by the lychgate, supposing that
with a squire like Sir Charles the inside should be of unusual interest.
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