Fourteen of the sixteen miles intervening between the railway terminus and the end of their journey had been gone over, when they began to pass along the brink of a valley some miles in extent, wherein the wintry skeletons of a more luxuriant vegetation than had hitherto surrounded them proclaimed an increased richness of soil, which showed signs of far more careful enclosure and management than had any slopes they had yet passed. A little farther, and an opening in the elms stretching up from this fertile valley revealed a mansion.
“That’s Endelstow House, Lord Luxellian’s,” said the driver.
“Endelstow House, Lord Luxellian’s,” repeated the other mechanically. He then turned himself sideways, and keenly scrutinized the almost invisible house with an interest which the indistinct picture itself seemed far from adequate to create. “Yes, that’s Lord Luxellian’s,” he said yet again after a while, as he still looked in the same direction.
“What, be we going there?”
“No; Endelstow Vicarage, as I have told you.”
“I thought you m’t have altered your mind, sir, as ye have stared that way at nothing so long.”
“Oh no; I am interested in the house, that’s all.”
“Most people be, as the saying is.”
“Not in the sense that I am.”
“Oh!...Well, his family is no better than my own, ’a b’lieve.”