fashion of travelling;' at which Althea blushed and said nothing more,
and Mrs. Golding began pleasantly to chide Andrew for his hazarding of
our safety as he had done, which had put Althea into these discontents;
and he hung his head, smiling, and had not a word to say for himself. I
should scarce have remembered this accident, or Andrew's behaviour on
it, had it not been for things that befell after.

I was heartily weary of journeying by the time we got to West Fazeby;
the way was long, the manner of travelling new to me, I had not so much
as slept at an inn before, our former home being no great distance from
town; and my company was not such as to shorten the way, for Aunt
Golding was the only frank and cheerful-spoken person in our party,
Althea behaving, as I told her, like an enchanted princess in a fairy
tale, so melancholy, proud, and silent, and Andrew being so dashed with
her stately ways that the poor youth was not less tongue-tied than she.
So I was glad indeed when we rode out of York one fine morning, and Mrs.
Golding told us we must reach her house before the day was out; in which
she said no more than truth.

She having always talked of it as a poor farmhouse, our surprise was not
little when we saw it at last. It stands a little away from the
village; it is no great house, but is a right fair one to my thinking,
built of red brick, with a great deal of wood, handsomely carved, about
the gables and the porch; it is much grown with ivy, at which our aunt
would often rail, but I think for all that she loved it, seeing it makes
the house green and pleasant even in winter. And at the back, looking
into the gardens and orchards, was a pleasant porch, a very large one,
grown with roses as well as ivy, wherein Althea and I have spent many a
happy hour in summer-time, sitting there with our needlework or our
lutes. I can see it in fancy, and would very fain be in it, looking on