CHAPTER VI.
HOME SCENES
Evelyn’s home was comfortable without being luxurious, and well suited to a family of moderate fortune. Charmingly situate, in the loveliest of England’s midland counties, the house, originally an old monastery, stood in the midst of a richly wooded though not very extensive park. The amusements at Woodlands, as is the case more or less all over England, were more suitable to gentlemen than to the fairer sex. They consisted, principally, of hunting, shooting, and fishing in some of the trout streams hard by. The Squire, as he was usually termed, with his son, Captain Travers, constantly availed themselves of these facilities for sport; consequently we ladies were left almost entirely on our own resources. An occasional dinner party, to which we were expected to drive out some ten or twelve miles, in full evening costume, perhaps on a snowy night, formed the only variety to our rather monotonous life. These dinner parties were altogether “flat, stale and unprofitable.” The usual codfish, with oyster sauce, saddle of mutton, and boiled chicken or turkey, were served up, and flavored by such conversation as the following:
“A fine day for scent, eh, Squire?”
“Glorious; were you in at the death?”
“I should say so. By Jove! my mare’s a clipper, I can tell you.”
“Smith, your grey rather swerved at that fence.”
“Why, yes; my fool of a groom physicked him only a week since, and the fence was, a stiff-un, but he’s a very devil to go.”
Or thus: