All this was in Durant’s mind, as, after a troubled night, he looked out of his inn window in the morning upon a mellow sunshiny morning of true October weather, a warm yellow haze in the air, which melted into the ripe foliage below, and the mottled clouds above. The little town was embosomed in trees. It was a little more than a village, a little less than a town; and, perhaps, had become more of a suburb than either, being within the radius of London, and coming nearer to that increasing centre every day. The metropolis and the village had been long putting forth arms of approach towards each other, and Underhayes had grown gradually larger, and nearer year by year. There was still a village green in the centre of the place; but the old houses had put on new fronts, and got enlargements of various kinds, and had become the homes of London people who went to town every morning, instead of the poorish, but very genteel persons who used to inhabit them. This was a great gain to the place, and made it swell and grow bigger and bigger; but at the same time it was a loss and forfeiture of all the originality, and much of the quiet beauty, and no little of the genial and graceful comfort that had once dwelt around the green. Everybody was richer, larger, vainer; and gorgeous entertainments were given, at which there was much more expenditure but less friendliness than of old. The city men considered themselves a great deal more intelligent, as they certainly were more knowing, than the older inhabitants, the retired captains and colonels, the widows and old maids, and solitary couples, who were now dying out in the too active air of the place. But these relics of olden days, at least, returned their scorn with interest, if they could not compete with them in other ways. Half way between these two sections of the community stood Mr. Eagles, the great “coach,” whose fame was in all the schools and all the services. He lived in an old-fashioned house with an old gate, the posts of which were surmounted by two great stone balls, and which opened upon a bit of real avenue, and enclosed real grounds, something more than a garden. It was a genuine old house, in which a retired Cabinet Minister had once lived. It was true he had built additions to it, but they were done in good taste, and strict submission to the original style of the house, which was taken as a kind of homage to the antique and Conservative class, by that class itself. He had a large house, and he took pupils; but yet it was nothing like a school, for the young men did not live with him--no one but young Mr. Curtis, who was not to call a pupil, who was “reading” for his degree, and who was a young man of excellent family and an acquisition to any society. Arthur indeed, in his own person, was one of the chief conciliatory circumstances which made the old inhabitants on the Green tolerate and receive Mr. Eagles, whom the new inhabitants looked upon with respect as a man who had made his way.