CHILDREN OF THE DEAR COTSWOLDS

OTHER WORKS BY
L. ALLEN HARKER

JAN AND HER JOB
THE FFOLLIOTS OF REDMARLEY
A ROMANCE OF THE NURSERY
MASTER AND MAID
MISS ESPERANCE AND MR. WYCHERLY
MR. WYCHERLY'S WARDS

JOHN MURRAY, LONDON

TO

THE COUNTESS BATHURST

Dear to you, too, the small "uplandish" town,

The steep stone roofs, the graceful gabled street,

The great beech woods, the rolling purple down,

The golden fields that shimmer in the heat

With molten glow of buttercups ablaze—

Dear to you, too.

Dear to you, too, the folk, slow-spoken, kind,

Wise with a mother-wisdom not of books;

The sturdy "Cotsal-bred" of cautious mind,

That judges men by "doin's, not by looks,"

With sapient nods and trenchant homely phrase—

Dear to you, too.

And since you love them well—people and land—

I bring you stories of them—just a few

Old folk and young—in hope you'll let them stand

With others that I wot of dear to you.

How happy should these prove in future days—

Dear to you, too.

FOREWORD

"I'm homesick for my hills again—

My hills again!

To see above the Severn plain,

Unscabbarded against the sky,

The blue high blade of Cotswold lie."

F. W. HARVEY.

I was in the train, and at Swindon a mud-stained "Tommy," hung round with equipment like the White Knight, and accompanied by an old lame man and a young lad, tumbled into my carriage just as the train was leaving the station. The old man and the lad had evidently been to meet the soldier at the junction, so as to lose no possible moment of the precious "leaf." They were very cheery, and in turn refreshed themselves from a bottle, what time the rather uncheerful smell of the very-small-ale permitted at present was wafted about the carriage. Mingled with the rattle of the train came scraps of conversation: much mutual exchange of news in the slow, rumbling Gloucestershire voices, a little quickened and sharpened, just then, by excitement and the shamefaced emotion that refused to be entirely hidden. Every now and then one would hear such sentences as, "Ah, so 'a be, at Armenteers that was, poor Ernie! and us could never find no trace on 'im."

But as we neared Kemble they fell silent in the last cold gleam of the fading sunlight of a February afternoon. The soldier reached for his equipment, slung it, let down the window, and leaned out. Inhaling a deep breath of the keen Cotswold air, he looked back into the carriage, and, with a world of love in his voice, said slowly, "There 'a be, dear old Kemble—'a do look clean."

And faster than they had tumbled in they tumbled out, to be surrounded by a group of welcoming friends, but not before the soldier had hauled out my heavy suit-case for me, as I, too, alighted there,. I was going on to Cirencester, but the only porter left in these strenuous times, a very elderly porter, was absorbed into the welcoming group, and I wouldn't have disturbed him for the world. I wondered rather forlornly who would carry my suit-case up the stairs and across the bridge for me, when out of the gathering twilight there appeared another khaki-clad figure, who turned out to be a soldier of my very own, just then training a battery at Codford, who was coming to join me for a week-end with friends at Cirencester.

As we reached the long platform that runs alongside the shuttle line, he too sniffed delightedly at the good Cotswold air, and said, "Dear old place—how clean it feels!"

This is just an epitome of what is happening all over England every time a leave train starts inland from the coast. It's not only home and family our men are so glad to see—it's the land that bred them.

"God gives all men all earth to love,

But, since man's heart is small,

Ordains for each one spot shall prove

Belovèd over all."

And for some of us that spot happens to be in the Cotswolds.

Nowhere has the spirit of place been more insistent and persistent. Surely no county has more melodious names than Gloucestershire. They chime in the ears of those that love them like a peal of old mellow bells. No ugly place could ever be called Colne St. Aldwyns or Fretherne or Minsterworth, and there is something in the very sound of Bibury, Pinbury and Sapperton, Rendcombe and Miserden, that carries with it a sense of wide grass glades and great old trees gathered together in sun-flecked woods that, in May, are carpeted with bluebells and, in October, are glorious in the vivid