Oh, but it was fine, to unpack one’s own box—to lay out one’s clothes in long, cedar-wood drawers, fronted with curved polished mahogany; to draw back the neat muslin blinds from lattice-paned windows that had always been Arden windows; to look out, as so many Ardens must have done, over land that, as far as one could see, had belonged to one’s family in old days. That it no longer belonged hardly mattered at all to the romance of hearts only ten and twelve years old.
Then to go down one’s own shallow, polished stairs (where portraits of old Ardens hung on the wall), and to find the cloth laid for dinner in one’s own wainscoted parlour, laid for two. I think it was nice of Edred to say, the moment Mrs. Honeysett had helped them to toad-in-the-hole and left them to eat it—
“May I pass you some potatoes, Lady Arden?”
Elfrida giggled happily.
“THE CHILDREN WENT IN THE CARRIER’S CART.”
The parlour was furnished with the kind of furniture they knew and loved. It had a long, low window that showed the long, narrow garden outside. The walls were panelled with wood, browny-grey under its polish.
“Oh,” said Elfrida, “there must be secret panels here.”
And though Edred said, “Secret fiddlesticks!” he in his heart felt that she was right.
After dinner, “May we explore?” Elfrida asked, and Mrs. Honeysett, most charming of women, answered heartily—