The farm lay in a hollow among the Somersetshire hills, an old-fashioned stone house, surrounded by barns and outhouses. Over the doorway the date when it was built had been carved, 1673, and the house, grey and weather-beaten, looked as much a part of the landscape as the trees that surrounded it. An avenue of splendid elms led from the road to the garden. The people who lived here were as stolid, sturdy and unpretentious as the house. Their only boast was that ever since the house was built from father to son they had been
born and died in it. For three hundred years they had farmed the surrounding land.
George Meadows was now a man of fifty, and his wife was a year or two younger. They were both fine, upstanding people in the prime of life; and their children, two sons and three girls, were handsome and strong. I have never seen a more united family. They were merry, industrious and kindly. Their life was patriarchal. They were happy and they deserved their happiness.