By Eleanor’s order, Thomas lifted me into the dog-cart, and then, to my astonishment, asked “Miss Eleanor” if she would drive. Eleanor nodded, and, climbing on to the driver’s seat, took the reins with reassuring calmness. Thomas balanced the meat-basket behind, and “t’owd mare” started at a good pace up a hill which would have reduced most south-country horses to crawl.
“Father and Mother are away still,” said Eleanor, after a pause. “So Thomas says. But they’ll be back in a day or two.”
We were driving up a sandy road such as we had seen winding over the hills. To our left there was a precipitous descent to the vale of the river. To our right, flowers, and ferns, and heather climbed the steep hill, broken at every few yards by tiny torrents of mountain streams. The sun was setting over the distant Deadmanstone moors; little dropping wells tinkled by the roadside, where dozens of fat black snails were out for an evening stroll, and here and there a brimming stone trough reflected the rosy tints of the sky.
It was grey and chilly when we drove into the village. A stone pack-horse track, which now served as footpath, had run by the road and lasted into the village. The cottages were of stone, the walls and outhouses were of stone, and the vista was closed by an old stone church, like a miniature cathedral. There was more stone than grass in the churchyard, and there were more loose stones than were pleasant on the steep hill, up which we scrambled before taking a sharp turn into the Vicarage grounds.
CHAPTER XX.
THE VICARAGE—KEZIAH—THE DEAR BOYS—THE COOK—A YORKSHIRE TEA—BED-FELLOWS.
It was Midsummer. The heavy foliage brushed our faces as “the old mare,” with slack reins upon her back, drew us soberly up the steep drive, and stood still, of her own accord, before a substantial-looking house, built—“like everything else,” I thought—of stone. Huge rose-bushes—literal bushes, not “dwarfs” or “standards”—the growth of many years, bent under their load of blossoms. The old “maiden’s blush,” too rare now in our bedding plant gardens, the velvety “damask,” the wee Scotch roses, the prolific white, and the curious “York and Lancaster,” with monster moss-rose trees, hung over the carriage-road. The place seemed almost overgrown with vegetation, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.
As we turned the corner towards the house, Eleanor put out her left hand and dragged off a great branch of “maiden’s blush.” She forgot the recoil, which came against my face. All the full-blown flowers shed their petals over me, and I made my first appearance at the Vicarage covered with rose-leaves.