The Cat's Eye by R. Austin Freeman — Read

'Can there be any more pleasant place of human habitation than an English country town? ' I asked myself the question as I strolled round the market square of the little town of Aylesbury, gazing about me with a Londoner's pleasure in the restful, old-world aspect of the place I had still more than half an hour to wait, but I had no feeling of impatience. I could spend that time agreeably enough, sauntering around, wrapped in pleasurable idleness provocative of reflection, looking at the handsome market-place with its clock-tower and its statues immortalising in bronze the worthies of more stirring times, or at the carriers' carts that rested unhorsed in the square and told of villages and hamlets nestling amidst their trees but a few miles away down the leafy lanes.

Presently my leisurely perambulations brought me opposite a shop of more than common smartness, and here -- perhaps because the crowd of market folk was a little more dense -- I paused and gazed somewhat absently into the window. I have no idea why I looked into that particular shop window. The wares exposed in it -- ladies' hats -- have no special attraction to the masculine eye -- at least in the state in which they are presented by the milliner, bereft of the principal ornament which should be found underneath them. Nevertheless, I was not the only male observer. Another man had stopped and stood, nearer to the window than I, inspecting the gaily-flowered and feathered headgear with undeniable interest.