‘It is a very pretty place?’ I said interrogatively.
‘It isn’t bad, for them as likes it,’ was the guarded and somewhat depressing response.
I felt my spirits sink to zero. I had persuaded Jack to take it; he had suggested that we should go to see it first; but the advertisement had been so tempting, and the idea of the other longing applicants had made me so keen to secure it, that I felt whatever it was like, I must make the best of it, and contrive that Jack at least should not repent of having been beguiled by me into, as he expressed it, taking ‘a pig in a poke.’
‘The pony-carriage is sure to come,’ I said in a confident way, once more straining my eyes up the deserted road. As I uttered the word ‘pony-carriage,’ I detected a distinct grin for the second time on the man’s face, which was presently fully accounted for by the appearance of our equipage coming jolting down the deeply rutted road. Imagine a tax-cart of the shabbiest, dirtiest description, with bare boards for seats, and the bottom strewn with straw; the pony, an aged specimen, shambling along, with a harness in which coarse pieces of rope predominated. It was a pony-trap, with a vengeance.
I could almost have cried when it drew up, and I saw Jack’s critical eye running over all its shortcomings. And it was all my fault.
It was too late to recede from our bargain now; all that we could do was to bundle into the horrible machine, and endure as we best could an hour’s martyrdom driving to Morleigh Cottage.
Our groom was a civil boy of about fifteen, clad in ordinary working-clothes. He managed to sit on the shaft or somewhere, and to drive us back, as Jack of course had no idea of the direction; and, judging from the solitariness of the scene, we should not have been wise to depend upon chance passers-by to direct us.
Arrived at last, we found the Cottage was just two shades better than the trap. It was a tiny abode, as desolately situated as it was possible to conceive; the only redeeming point about it being that it was clean.
The next morning, which happened to be a very wet misty one, we surveyed our garden and domain generally. The tennis-lawn was spacious enough, and the garden, to do Mr Challacombe justice, was well stocked; but the place itself was like the city of the dead—so silent, so quiet, so lonely.
But as the weather improved, we got out most of the day, which rendered us very independent of the small low-roofed rooms. Jack and I took long walks, and occasionally we utilised the pony-trap, taking with us our little Rose and her nurse.