Enter Sir Robert

As it is some time since we were at Hatch End, we will take this opportunity of reminding our Reader (the one who says our books are so nice because it doesn’t matter which you read or where you open it as they are all exactly the same—as indeed they are, with a difference) that it is a small village in the valley of the Rising, which here flows through water-meadows. Hatch House, since 1721 the seat of the Hallidays, local landowners or Squires, is a pleasant red-brick building sheltered by the downs at the back. In front of it is a lawn, bounded by a low red-brick wall with a stone coping and an eight foot drop on its riverward side to the old Barchester Road, beyond which lie the water-meadows and the Rising.