A Change of Air Author:Anthony Hope Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: The New Man At Littlehill, CHAPTER II. tube flew Aan at XittlebilU J1ARKET DENBOROUGH is not a large town. Perhaps it is none the worse for that, and, if it be, there is compensation to b... more »e found in its pic- turesqueness, its antiquity, and its dignity ; for there has been a town where it stands from time immemorial; it makes a great figure in county histories and local guidebooks; it is an ancient corporation, an assize town, and quarter-sessions borough. It does not grow, for country towns, dependent solely on the support of the rural districts surrounding, are not given to growing much nowadays. Moreover, the Delanes do not readily allow new houses to be built, and if a man lives in Market Denborough, he must be a roofless vagrant or a tenant of Mr. Delane. It is not the place to make a fortune; but, on the other hand, unusual recklessness is necessary to the losing of one there. If the triumphs of life are on a small scale, the struggle for existence is not very fierce, and a wise man might do worse than barter the uncertain chances and precarious joys of a larger stage, to play a modest, easy, quiet part on the little boards of Market Denborough. It must not, however, be supposed that the lion and the lamb have quite sunk their differences and lain down together at Market Den- borough. There, as elsewhere, the millennium tarries, and there are not wanting fierce feuds, personal, municipal, nay, even, within the wide limits of Mr. Delane's tolerance, political. If it were not so, the Mayor would not have been happy, for the Mayor loved a fight; and Alderman Johnstone, who was a Radical, would have felt his days wasted; and the two gentlemen would not have been, as they continually were, at loggerheads concerning paving contracts and kindred subjects. There was no want of interests in life, if a .man ...« less