"The misfortune was that it had taken the fancy, or just suited the
requirements, of several previous tenants. You know, I dare say, the
kind of person who rents a secluded house in the country? Well, yes,
there are several kinds; but they seem to agree in being odious. No one
knows where they come from, though they soon remove all doubt about
where they're 'going to,' as the children say. 'Shady' is the word, is
it not? Well, the previous tenants of Tresillack (from first to last a
bewildering series) had been shady with a vengeance.
"I knew nothing of this when I first made application to the landlord, a
solid yeoman inhabiting a farm at the foot of the coombe, on a cliff
overlooking the beach. To him I presented myself fearlessly as a
spinster of decent family and small but assured income, intending a
rural life of combined seemliness and economy. He met my advances
politely enough, but with an air of suspicion which offended me.
I began by disliking him for it: afterwards I set it down as an
unpleasant feature in the local character. I was doubly mistaken.
Farmer Hosking was slow-witted, but as honest a man as ever stood up
against hard times; and a more open and hospitable race than the people
on that coast I never wish to meet. It was the caution of a child who
had burnt his fingers, not once but many times. Had I known what I
afterwards learned of Farmer Hosking's tribulations as landlord of a
'secluded country residence,' I should have approached him with the
bashfulness proper to my suit and faltered as I undertook to prove the
bright exception in a long line of painful experiences.
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