In the porch, Essie breathless and laughing from their helter-skelter rush, and shaking the raindrops from her skirts, Mr. Wriford read again a duplicate of the auctioneer's notice posted at the gate. He came to the last words and read them aloud with exclamation.
"'Open to view!' Essie, if we haven't been donkeys all this time! I believe it's—" He turned the handle of the door. "It is. It's open!"
"Oo-oo!" cried Essie, clasping her hands in delight, flashing her sparkling eyes all about the wide hall—its white panelling, its inglenook fireplace, its room-doors standing ajar with captivating peeps of interiors even more entrancing than when seen from outside, its low, spacious stairway bending up to the first floor—"Oh, if ever! Oh, Arthur, if it isn't a darling!"
At the cliffs—and they had been within five minutes of them when the rain came—he had planned they should sit down and he would tell her: "I'm going by the five o'clock train. Here's my ticket. Essie, are you coming with me? Look, here's yours." The diversion of being within enchanting Whitehouse, his laughter at Essie's ecstasies as from room to room they went, momentarily forgot him his purpose—and yet, and partly of envisaging within these perfect surroundings the very joy, settled with Essie in dwelling-place so conducive to work and happiness as this, that soon should be his, brought him (and her) directly to it.
With light and trifling steps they suddenly were plunged amidst it. The exploration, twice repeated, was done. Essie was in ecstasies anew over the sitting-room, of which Mr. Wriford told her again: "Yes, this would be yours. That's the dining-room behind, you see, with a door to the kitchen where your servants would be."
"Not really two servants?" said Essie.
"Oh, rather—three perhaps; and then the gardener chap who'd look after your pony-trap."
"Oh, my goodness!" said Essie, sparkling. "Do just go on, dear!"
"Yes, well, this would be yours. We wouldn't call it the drawing-room or any rot like that. Just your room with jolly furniture and a little bureau where you'd keep your accounts. We'd have tea in here when we didn't have it outside. The servants would call it the sitting-room. We'd call it jolly little Essie's room. I'd get fed up with working sometimes, you know, and come and sprawl about in here. You'd be sewing or something, I expect."
Essie had no expression for all this but an enormous sigh of ecstasy. Then she said: "Now we'll go back to yours," and hand in hand they came to it—and to their reckoning.