Our village used to be one of the quietest in England. We prided ourselves that nothing ever happened there to excite or worry us in any way. Colonel Challenger, of the Royal Engineers, retired, often congratulated the vicar, who is upwards of sixty-five years of age, on the unbroken peace which we enjoyed. The vicar used to remind me, once a fortnight or so, that we owed our happiness largely to the fact that we were eight miles from a railway station. When I met Hankly, a retired Indian judge, in the post office I invariably pointed out to him that our lot would be much less pleasant if we lived in a neighbourhood where tennis parties were rife or among people who expected us to turn out in the evenings after dinner to play cards. Lord Manby, who owns the village and all the country round it, used to pay a visit to his home every year and ask us each to lunch with him once. We all accepted these invitations, but we told each other that they were a horrible nuisance and a most disagreeable break in the monotony of our lives. I think we were all quite honest and really believed that we were perfectly happy.
Then Mrs. Clegg C. Mimms rented the Manor House from Lord Manby, and all peace came to an end for us. She described herself on her visiting cards as “the Honourable Mrs. Mimms,” and that disturbed us to begin with. We had to meet each other pretty frequently to discuss how she could be the Honourable Mrs. anything. She was plainly and unmistakably an American, and the vicar was of opinion that, since there are no titles in the American Republic, neither Mrs. Mumms nor her late husband could be the descendant of a lord. Hankly, who has seen a great deal of the world, told us that American ambassadors are styled the Right Honourable, and that Mrs. Mimms’s husband might
