I was relieved, and when we had made our next change of horses, and got
into a country that was unknown to me, the new scenery and the sense of
progress worked their accustomed effects on a young traveller who had lived
a particularly secluded life, and I began to experience, on the whole, a
not unpleasurable excitement.
Mary Quince and I, with the hopefulness of inexperienced travellers, began
already to speculate about our proximity to Bartram-Haugh, and were sorely
disappointed when we heard from the nondescript courier--more like a
ostler than a servant, who sat behind in charge of us and the luggage, and
represented my guardian's special care--at nearly one o'clock, that we had
still forty miles to go, a considerable portion of which was across the
high Derbyshire mountains, before we reached Bartram-Haugh.
The fact was, we had driven at a pace accommodated rather to the
convenience of the horses than to our impatience; and finding, at the
quaint little inn where we now halted, that we must wait for a nail or two
in a loose shoe of one of our relay, we consulted, and being both hungry,
agreed to beguile the time with an early dinner, which we enjoyed very
sociably in a queer little parlour with a bow window, and commanding, with
a litle garden for foreground, a very pretty landscape.
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