H. de Vere Stacpoole and Margaret Stacpoole

“ In summer Upton sleeps among roses, in an atmosphere of sunlight and drowsiness, sung to by the bees and the birds. The Rose Hotel stands, set back from the High Street, in its own grounds, and beside the Rose there are two other houses for refreshment, the Bricklayers' Arms and the Saracen's Head, of which more hereafter.
It is a pleasant place as well as a restful one. Passing through it, people say: “Oh, what a dream”; living in it, one is driven at last to admit there are dreams and dreams. It is not the place that forces this conviction, but the people. ”

“ Just as the Roman road narrows at the beginning of the High Street, so the life of a stranger coming, say from London, narrows at the beginning of his or her residence in Upton. If you are a villager, you find yourself under a microscope, with three hundred eyes at the eyepiece. If you are a genteel person but without introductions, you find yourself the target of half a score of telescopes leveled at you by the residents. ”

“ Simon seemed happy enough, talking to a dowager-looking woman and drinking his tea, but Bobby was not happy. It all seemed wrong, somehow, and he abused Pugeot in his heart. Pugeot had said himself that a moated grange was the proper place for uncle Simon and that even then he might tumble into the moat, and now, with the splendid inconsequence of his nature, he had tumbled him into this whirl of local society. This was not seclusion in the country. Why, some of these people might, by chance, be Simon's clients. ”