imperceptible. No brand-new houses start into existence with
lightning-like rapidity, for the all-sufficient reason that in such
sparsely populated districts the enterprising builder would stand an
excellent chance of having his attractive villa residences left empty
on his hands. No; new houses are built to order, if at all. In the
same way, it is rare to find a fresh shop spring into being in a small
village, and should it happen, in all probability a year or two will
see the shutters up and the disgruntled proprietor departing in search
of pastures new. For the villagers who have always dealt with the
local butcher, baker, and grocer, and whose fathers have probably dealt
with their fathers before them, are not easily to be cajoled into
transferring their custom--and certainly not to the establishment of
any one who has had the misfortune to be born outside the confines of
the county, and is therefore to be briefly summed up in the one damning
word "vurriner." [1]

So that Diana, returning to Crailing for a brief holiday after a year's
absence, found the tiny fishing village quite unchanged, and this fact
imparted an air almost of unreality to the twelve busy, eventful months
which had intervened. She felt as if she had never been away, as
though the Diana Quentin who had been living in London and studying
singing under the greatest master of the day were some one quite apart
from the girl who had passed so many quiet, happy years at Crailing
Rectory.

The new and unaccustomed student's life, the two golden visits which
she had paid to Italy, the introduction into a milieu of clever, gifted
people all struggling to make the most of their talents, had been such
an immense change from the placid, humdrum existence which had preceded
it, that it still held for her an almost dreamlike charm of novelty,