Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/139

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Grassley-in-the-Hole
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never thought of doing yet—discover what our difference is?”

“It never occurred to me before,” answered MacIan with tranquillity. “It is a good suggestion.”

And they set out at an easy swing down the steep road to the village of Grassley-in-the-Hole.

Grassley-in-the-Hole was a rude parallelogram of buildings, with two thoroughfares which might have been called two high streets if it had been possible to call them streets. One of these ways was higher on the slope than the other, the whole parallelogram lying aslant, so to speak, on the side of the hill. The upper of these two roads was decorated with a big public-house, a butcher’s shop, a small public-house, a sweetstuff shop, a very small public-house, and an illegible sign-post. The lower of the two roads boasted a horse-pond, a post-office, a gentleman’s garden with very high hedges, a microscopically small public-house, and two cottages. Where all the people lived who supported all the public-houses was in this, as in many other English villages, a silent and smiling mystery. The church lay a little above and beyond the village, with a square gray tower dominating it decisively.

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