When Roma and her protégée appeared at the front door they found the pony chaise, with the white cob harnessed to it, standing before the house. Pompous Pirate stood at the horse’s head.
“Better leave me dribe yo’ young mist’ess,” said the man.
“Not this time, Pontius. Take Ceres to the meeting-house she is so fond of. Now lift Miss Catherine into the chaise,” Roma said.
Pompous obeyed.
Then Roma got in, sat down, took the reins, and started the cob.
Owlet shivered and shook herself with delight as they went rolling along the avenue, between rows of sweet-scented flowering locust trees, and out of the broad lawn gate on to a road through the woods.
“Oh! this is dee-licious! I am so glad you didn’t have Uncle Paunchus to drive!” she exclaimed, with a little shudder of joy.
“Don’t you like Uncle Pontius?” inquired Roma.
“Oh, yes,” Owlet admitted. “I like him well enough, but he is so awfully big. It sort of crowds one just to look at Uncle Paunchus. Besides, it is so nice and cozy for you and me to be driving through this heavenly place all by ourselves.”
Their road wound up and down, over wooded hills and through fertile vales, with glimpses of farmhouses, fields and orchards here and there, until at last, on the outskirts of the village, they came to the church, in the midst of its large, well-shaded, parklike grounds, differing only from a park in the gleaming white gravestones scattered here and there among the trees.