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A VIEW of Barton Valley, as they entered it, gave them cheerfulness… a small green court was the whole of its demesne in front; and a neat wicket gate admitted them, was ‘defective’ as a cottage, for ‘the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles’. In other words, it was a cottage in name, but not in character; it didn’t fulfil the pretty, squat ideal, with thick, higgledy-piggledy walls (cosy in winter, cool in summer), beams and low ceilings, a thatched porch fringed with wisteria and a cobbled path, all surrounded by an explosion of lupins and delphiniums, lavender and roses, much like our cover star.
