It certainly sounded attractive, and it was with great curiosity that I
went off on the following day, as appointed, for my own interview.



II

AVELEY


The train drew up at a little wayside station soon after four o'clock on a
November afternoon. It was a bare, but rather an attractive landscape. The
line ran along a wide, shallow valley, with a stream running at the bottom,
with many willows, and pools fringed with withered sedges. The fields were
mostly pastures, with here and there a fallow. There were a good many bits
of woodland all about, and a tall spire of pale stone, far to the south,
overtopped the roofs of a little town. I was met by an old groom or
coachman, with a little ancient open cart, and we drove sedately along
pleasant lanes, among woods, till we entered a tiny village, which he told
me was Aveley, consisting of three or four farmhouses, with barns and
ricks, and some rows of stone-built cottages. We turned out of the village
in the direction of a small and plain church of some antiquity, behind
which I saw a grove of trees and the chimneys of a house surmounted by a
small cupola. The house stood close by the church, having an open space of
grass in front, with an old sundial, and a low wall separating it from the
churchyard. We drove in at a big gate, standing open, with stone
gate-posts. The Hall was a long, stone-built Georgian house, perhaps a
hundred and fifty years old, with two shallow wings and a stone-tiled roof,
and was obviously of considerable size. Some withered creepers straggled