‘We can never be sufficiently grateful to your dear old friend,’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘If he had not in the first place written you that letter, Howard, and afterwards acted upon his opinion so boldly, what might have been our fate?’
‘He always used to look after me when we were in the regiment,’ said her husband acquiescingly; ‘I daresay he’ll find a similar pleasure in taking charge of us now. Fortunately for you and the girls, he never married.’
A few miles only needed to be traversed before Mr. Evans triumphantly drove his team through the gate of the dilapidated garden fence surrounding the front of a large old-fashioned stone mansion, with wide verandah and lofty balcony, supported upon freestone pillars. A stout, elderly woman of decided aspect opened the creaking hall door, and casting a searching glance at Mr. R. Evans, made the strangers welcome.
‘I’m sure I’m very glad to see you, my lady,’ said she, bobbing an antiquated curtsey, ‘and you, sir, and the young ladies and gentlemen. I’ve done all I could to clean up the old barrack of a house; it was that lonesome, and made me frighted with ghosts, as I thought I’d never live to see you all; and Dick here, I knew there was no certainty of, as might have gone to Timor, or the Indies, and never let on a word about it. Please you to come in, my lady.’
‘My old woman’s temper is none of the best, Captain,’ said Dick, stating the fact with philosophical calmness, ‘but I’ll warrant she’s cleaned up as much as any two, and very bad it wanted it when Parson Sternworth brought us over.’
Now that a nearer view was afforded of the demesne and dwelling, it was evident that the place had been long abandoned to natural decay and sordid neglect. The fences were rotten, gapped, or fallen; the orchard, though the aged trees were high out of the reach of browsing cattle, had been used as a convenient species of stock paddock; the climbers, including a magnificent bignonia and a wistaria, the great laterals of which had erstwhile clothed the verandah pillars with beauty and bloom, were broken and twisted. In the rear of the building all the broken bottles and bones of the land appeared to be collected; while, with windows broken, shutters hanging on a single hinge, doors closing with difficulty, or impossible to open, all things told of the recklessness of ruined owners.
Still, in despite of all deficiencies, the essentials of value could not be overlooked. The house, though naked and desolate of aspect, was large and commodious, promising in its shingled roof and massive stone walls protection against the heat of summer, the cold of winter. The deep black mould needed but ordinary culture to respond generously. The offices might be mouldering and valueless, but the land was there, thinly timbered, richly grassed, well adapted for stock of all kinds. And though the gaunt limbs of the girdled trees looked sadly unpicturesque between the front of the house and the lake shore, some had been left untouched, and the grass was all the more richly swarded. The lake itself was a grand indisputable fact. It was deep and fresh, abounding in water-fowl, a priceless boon to dwellers in a climate wherein a lack of rivers and permanent reservoirs is unhappily a distinguishing characteristic.
Let it not be supposed that Wilfred and his mother, the girls and Jeanie were outside the house all this time. Very promptly had Dick unloaded the household stores, pressing all able-bodied persons, including his wife, into the service, until the commissariat was safely bestowed under shelter. His waggon was taken to the rear, his horses unharnessed, and he himself in a marvellously short space of time enjoying a well-earned pipe, and advising Andrew to bestow Daisy’s calf in a dilapidated but still convertible calf-pen, so that his mother might graze at ease, and yet be available for the family breakfast table in the morning.
‘The grass here is fust-rate,’ he said, in a tone of explanation to Andrew. ‘There’s been a lot of rain in spring. It’s a pity but we had a few good cows to milk. It would be just play for you and me and the young master in the mornings. Teach him to catch hold like and learn him the use of his hands.’
‘Him milk!’ exclaimed Andrew, in a tone of horrified contempt. ‘And yet—I dinna say but if it’s the Lord’s will the family should ha’ been brocht to this strange land, it may be no that wrang that he should labour, like the apostles, “working with his hauns.” There’s guid warrant for’t.’