It was he, sure enough, as red as ever, and grinning now as well, like an old acquaintance. The driver of the fly, on the contrary, was a rather grumpy man. I had been thinking of asking nurse to let me go outside, but when I saw his face I didn't. No chance of him letting me drive part of the way, even though the horse was about a hundred years old, and went jog-jogging along as if it meant to take a month to get to Mossmoor. I can generally tell something about people by the look of their faces.
So we all squashed inside—nurse and us four. It wasn't a very great squash, for the fly was a regular old-fashioned roomy one. Once upon a time I daresay it had been some lady's grand 'coach' in which she drove about paying all her visits. I happened to say this to Anne, and she liked the idea. She said she thought she would write a story, and call it The History of a Chariot. I don't know if she ever has.
When we got to Mossmoor the stupid coachman was going to drive us into the stable-yard, which would quite have stopped the niceness of our first arriving, especially as I caught sight of dear old Mrs. Parsley standing at the front door with her best cap on, all in a flutter to welcome us. (I didn't call her 'dear old Mrs. Parsley' to myself then: it's since I've got to know her. And I couldn't have told it was her best cap; it wasn't for some time that we got to understand her caps. They were like degrees of comparison, both upwards and downwards, for she had always about six going at a time.) So I holloaed out to the driver to stop at the little gate, and he did, though he growled and grumbled. He is so surly; his name's Griffin, and he and the fly belong to the 'Yule Log' at Fewforest, North end. There's no inn at South end. I was only just in time, for you can't turn, farther up the lane, unless you drive on a bit, or turn in the stable-yard. You see it was a good thing for the girls that I'd been there before, and knew all the ins and outs of the place, wasn't it?
It was fun showing them the rooms and everything. And even though I had described them as particularly as I could, they all declared—nurse too—that I hadn't made them out half nice enough. I was glad of that.
We had plenty of time to poke about, because the luggage hadn't yet come. And Mrs. Parsley had tea set out all ready; she wasn't one of those horrid landladies who won't give anything at the first start for fear they should possibly not be paid back for it. I'm sure she never charged anything for the cake she'd made us, and the jam and honey, that first night, though there was precious little over of any of them when we'd finished.
CHAPTER X
A LONG AGO ADVENTURE
We were very busy and happy the next morning getting all our things settled, and making the summer kitchen look as pretty as we could. We had brought one or two folding chairs and some rugs and table-covers to brighten it up, and it did look very nice indeed.
It was a good thing we were taken up that way, for—wasn't it provoking?—that first day it took it into its head to rain! All the morning at least, though it cleared up about our dinner-time. But it was very tiresome, for though it was quite mild, it was of course damp under foot, and nurse wouldn't hear of us going a nice scrambly walk as we had planned. And she would come with us. I daresay she was right, but it was a bore.