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 CHAPTER IX. BIDEFORD

ARNSTAPLE and Bideford are towns that the jerry-builders have done their utmost to make hideous with white brick villas banded with red. It is a curious fact, but fact it is, that a builder without a grain of taste, if ambitious to make one of his domestic monstrosities attractive, will look into the pattern-book of a maker of terracotta, and select the most obtrusive ridge-tiles and, above all, hip-knobs he can find, frizzle the spine of his roof with the former, clap the latter on his gable, and think that the product is stylish. The foliations of the ridge-tiles get broken after a frost, and the roof acquires a mangy look, but not till after the villa has been let as a handsome suburban residence.

When one encounters this sort of thing, repeated 134