An Isle of Surrey: A Novel

It is now two years since that awful night. Once more Boland's Ait is uninhabited; once more no one dwells on the shore of Crawford's Bay. But in a very small but comfortable and pretty house in one of the leafy roads of the south-east district, and not far from the great Welford Gasworks, live in amity and cheerful concord two small families consisting of Alfred Layard and his little son Freddie, and Philip Ray, his wife Hetty, and their tiny baby girl, who is called after the mother, but always spoken of as Hesper by the mother, because of the great seriousness with which young mothers ever regard their first little babes. Hetty declares Hesper to be the wisest child in all the realms of the empire, for she never by any chance utters a sound during the two hours each evening that Philip is busy with his pupils.

Bramwell lives with his boy in a cottage at Barnet, where he is preparing for the press a selection from articles written by him in magazines during the past two years.

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