‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t say they did,’ owned Aunt Grace with a little twinkle in her eye; ‘at the best of times they went at a slow and stately pace somewhat resembling a funeral procession, and at the worst of times they sat down comfortably in the middle of the road and refused to budge. Still, I don’t doubt that if my friends had had the bringing up of those donkeys from the first, they would have gone all right without being beaten. It was simply that the poor creatures had got so used to it that they didn’t understand anything else.’
‘Aren’t we nearly at your house?’ asked Kitty presently; ‘we seem getting quite outside the village now.’
‘No, we have still about ten minute’s walk before we get to Fir-tree Cottage,’ replied Aunt Grace; ‘it stands right away from other houses, just outside a large wood. It’s very nice in most ways being quite out of the village, for it makes one so much freer to do just as one likes, but it’s rather inconvenient sometimes being so far from the station. It’s really not so very much farther to Chudstone Station—the one you passed next before Woodsleigh; indeed, when I have plenty of time, I sometimes start from there instead of from Woodsleigh, for it makes a delightful walk through the wood.’
‘How jolly to live in a cottage and so near a wood!’ cried Kitty, giving another little skip.
‘As to living in a cottage, I’m afraid you won’t find it quite your idea of one,’ said Aunt Grace, ‘though it really was one before grandfather built on the front part of the house. The wood’s real enough though, and begins only just outside our back-garden gate, which is very charming of it.’
‘I thought grandfather was a Professor,’ remarked Micky, looking puzzled.
‘Why, so he was,’ said Aunt Grace.
‘But if he built the front part of the house he must have been a stone-mason, like Mary’s brother,’ objected Micky.
‘Aunt Grace didn’t mean that he built it with his own hands, you silly child!’ said Emmeline, laughing.