This was my first visit to the old Manor House, but Maggie had spent a very pleasant month there two years before, and was much looking forward to seeing her aunts again.
We had a long journey, and it was late in the evening when we arrived at Branston.
"I should think John will be here," said Maggie, as we got out at the very quiet country station.
John was there, awaiting our arrival. John was a fat, comfortable-looking old coachman, who had been in the family for more than fifty years, and looked as if, in the whole course of them, he had never had one single day's hard work.
John was driving two horses equally fat, equally comfortable-looking, and equally, by their appearance, denying the bare idea of their ever having had any hard work to do.
John touched his hat, and bade the ladies welcome, and hoped "Missy" was quite well. He was evidently quite at his ease, and accustomed to be regarded as a family friend.
We thanked John, and answered his inquiries, and then took our seats in the carriage. It was very old, like John, and quite out of date, of unwieldy proportions, and made a great noise in the world.
We drove for about a mile and a half, through rather an uninteresting country; at least, so it seemed to me, after the wooded hills and pretty valleys which had surrounded our dear old home. He went very slowly indeed, and when there was the slightest rising in the ground, the horses walked solemnly and cautiously up it, and I was more than ever convinced that the opinion I had formed about the easy life that those two comfortable-looking horses had always led was perfectly correct.
At last we went through a large iron gate, and entered a pretty old-fashioned garden, surrounded by a high wall. At one end of this garden stood the Manor House, a quaint old place, built of red brick, and partly covered with ivy.
As we drove past the window, Maggie's three aunts looked out, and nodded and smiled at us; they did not come out to meet us, for, as I afterwards discovered, they were very much afraid of taking cold, and never ventured into the hall when the front door was open.