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Richard Staines and his wife had agreed that they would live principally in the country, and one day during their engagement Jane took Richard down to Selsdon Bois to show him the house of her dreams, known to the Post Office as Midway. Then, when he came to select, he would know the kind of thing to look for. Jane had known Midway in her childhood, and had loved its wide and gentle staircases, its fine Jacobean panelling, its stone roof, and its old garden with the paved walks between yew hedges.

“Well,” said Richard, “if you are so keen on the place, why shouldn’t we wait for a chance to get it, instead of looking for something more or less like it?”

“Because you can’t,” said Jane. “We’re general public, and general public is never allowed to buy a place like Midway. People live in it till they die, and then leave it to the person they love best, and that person lives in it till he dies. And so on again. It never comes into the market. Things that are really valuable hardly ever do.”

The conversation took place in the train which was conveying them to Selsdon Bois.

“Ah, well,” said Richard, “what is there? It needn’t be very big to be too big for us.”

“Not a big house at all. I never counted, but I should think about twenty rooms.” She made guesses as to acreage of garden, orchard, and grass-land. She admitted that they were merely guesses.

“The only thing that I really remember is that it was thirty-six acres in all. Could we do it?”

“Yes,” said Richard; “we ought to be able to do that.”

“Still, it doesn’t matter,” said Jane despondently, “because, of course, places like that are never to be got.”

Then they stepped out on to the platform of Selsdon Bois Station, where a man was busily pasting up a bill. It announced the sale by auction, unless previously disposed of, of Midway.

“Miracle!” said Jane, subsiding gracefully on to a milk-can. “It’s ours!”

And a fortnight later it was really theirs. The house was as delightful as Jane had said, but it was an old house, and during the last ten years had not been well kept up. There was a good deal to be done to make it quite comfortable and satisfactory. The work was to have been finished by the time Richard and his wife returned from the honeymoon.

“It’s been simply funny the way we’ve been kept back,” said the builder cheerfully. “But you might be able to get in, say, in another week or so.”

They remained for a month in town, and this gave Jane time to discover that it was not possible to teach Zero to do trust-and-paid-for, and to look up a really admirable train by which Richard might travel from Selsdon Bois to the city every weekday morning.

“Yes,” said Richard, a little doubtfully, “it’s quite a good train, but–“

“But what?”

“Oh, nothing. I shall probably take it whenever I go up, though it’s a bit earlier than is absolutely necessary. You see, I don’t regard my presence at the office as so essential as I once did. My partners are most able and trustworthy men, and they like the work. Of course, I shall keep an eye on things.”

“Then how many days a week will you go up?”

“Well, just at first I shall go up–er–from time to time.”

“Come here, Zero,” said Jane. “See that man? He’s idle. Kill him!”

“Idle? Why, I shall have any amount of things to do down at Midway! Gardeners and grooms want a deal of looking after at first, until they pick up the way you want things done. Then there’s that car your father gave us. I’ve got to learn how to drive it; I’ve got to know all about its blessed works right up to the very last word. The man who don’t is open to be robbed and fooled by his chauffeur. That won’t be done in a week. Then I’ve had an idea that we might lay out a golf-course–quite a small affair, just for practice.”