"How my mother would stare!" said he at length, irresolutely, looking from one to the other, and smiling at their eagerness.
"What a bustle everything will be in!" exclaimed Kate. "I fancy I'm there already! The great blazing fires—the holly and mistletoe. We must all go, Charles—children and all!"
"Why, really, I hardly know"—— said Mr. Aubrey, hesitatingly.
"Oh! I've settled it all," quoth Kate, seeing that she had gained her point, and resolved to press her advantage, "and, what's more, we've no time to lose; this is Tuesday,—Christmas-day is Saturday—we must of course stop a night on the way; but hadn't we better have Griffiths in, to arrange all?" Mr. Aubrey laughed—and—rang the bell.
"Request Mr. Griffiths to come to me," said he to the servant who answered the summons.
Within a very few minutes that respectable functionary had made his appearance and received his instructions. The march to Shropshire was countermanded—and hey! for Yatton!—for which they were to start the next day about noon. Mr. Griffiths' first step was to pack off Sam, Mr. Aubrey's groom, by the Tally-ho, the first coach to York, starting at two o'clock that very day, with letters announcing the immediate arrival of the family. These orders were received by Sam, (who had been born and bred at Yatton,) while he was bestowing, with vehement sibilation, his customary civilities on a favorite mare of his master's. Down dropped his currycomb; he jumped into the air; snapped his fingers; then he threw his arms round Jenny, and tickled her under the chin. "Dang it," said he, as he threw her another feed of oats, "I wish thee were going wi' me—dang'd if I don't!" Then he hastily made himself "a bit tidy;" presented himself very respectfully before Mr. Griffiths, to receive the wherewithal to pay his fare; and having obtained it, off he scampered to the Bull and Mouth, as if it had been a neck-and-neck race between him and all London, which should get down to Yorkshire first. A little after one o'clock, his packet of letters was delivered to him; and within another hour Sam was to be seen (quite comfortable, with a draught of spiced ale given him by the cook, to make his hasty dinner "sit well") on the top of the Tally-ho, rattling rapidly along the great north road.
"Come, Kate," said Mrs. Aubrey, entering Miss Aubrey's room, where she was giving directions to her maid, "I've ordered the carriage to be at the door as soon as it can be got ready; we must go off to Coutts'—see!" She held in her hand two slips of paper, one of which she gave Miss Aubrey. 'Twas a check for one hundred pounds—her brother's usual Christmas-box—"and then we've a quantity of little matters to buy this afternoon. Come, Kate, quick! quick!"
Now, poor Kate had spent nearly all her money, which circumstance, connected with another that I shall shortly mention, had given her not a little concern. At her earnest request, her brother had, about a year before, built her a nice little school, capable of containing some eighteen or twenty girls, on a slip of land between the vicarage and the park wall of Yatton, and old Mrs. Aubrey and her daughter found a resident schoolmistress, and, in fact, supported the little establishment, which, at the time I am speaking of, contained some seventeen or eighteen of the villagers' younger children. Miss Aubrey took a prodigious interest in this little school, scarce a day passing without her visiting it when she was at Yatton; and what Kate wanted, was the luxury of giving a Christmas present to both mistress and scholars. That, however, she would have had some difficulty in effecting but for this her brother's timely present, which had quite set her heart at ease. On their return, the carriage was crowded with the things they had been purchasing—articles of clothing for the feebler old villagers; work-boxes, samplers, books, testaments, prayer-books, &c. &c. &c., for the school; the sight of which, I can assure the reader, made Kate far happier than if they had been the costliest articles of dress and jewelry.
The next day was a very pleasant one for travelling—"frosty, but kindly." About one o'clock there might have been seen standing before the door the roomy yellow family carriage, with four post-horses. All was in travelling trim. In the rumble sat Mr. Aubrey's valet and Mrs. Aubrey's maid—Miss Aubrey's, and one of the nursery-maids, going down by the coach which had carried Sam—the Tally-ho. The coach-box was piled up with that sort of luggage which, by its lightness and bulk, denotes lady-travelling: inside were Mrs. and Miss Aubrey muffled in furs, shawls, and pelisses; a nursery-maid, with little Master and Miss Aubrey, equally well protected from the cold; and the vacant seat awaited Mr. Aubrey, who at length made his appearance, having been engaged till the latest moment in giving and repeating specific instructions concerning the forwarding of his letters and papers. As soon as he had taken his place, and all had been snugly disposed within, the steps were doubled up, the door was closed, the windows were drawn up—crack! crack! went the whips of the two postilions, and away rolled the carriage over the dry hard pavement.
"Now that's what I calls doing it uncommon comfortable," said a pot-boy to one of the footmen at an adjoining house, where he was delivering the porter for the servants' dinner; "how werry nice and snug them two looks in the rumble behind!"