cked my box thankfully and left
New York for good, I hoped, and I got my wish, for I've never seen the
inside of it since.

A middle-aged coachman in good, quiet country livery, met me at the
little station, and though he was a still-mouthed fellow and rather
reserved, I made out quite a little idea of the place on the way. The
mistress, Mrs. Childress, was a young widow, deep in her mourning, so
there was no company. The housekeeper was her old nurse, who had
brought her up. John, who drove me, was coachman-gardener, and the
cook was his wife--both Catholics. Everything went on very quiet and
regular and it was hoped that the new upstairs maid wouldn't be one for
excitement and gaiety. The inside man had been valet to Mr. Childress
and was much trusted and liked by the family. I could see that old
John was a bit jealous in that direction.

We drove in through a black iron gate with cut stone posts and old
black iron lanterns on top, and the moment we were inside the gates I
began to take a fancy to the place. It wasn't kept up like the places
at home, but it was neat enough to show that things were taken thought
for, and the beds of asters and dahlias and marigolds as we got near
the house seemed so home-like and bright to me, I could have cried for
comfort. Childerstone was the name of the place; it was carved on a
big boulder by the side of the entrance, and just as we drove up to the
door John stopped to pick some dahlias for the house (being only me in
the wagon) and I took my first good look at my home for twenty years
afterward.

There was something about it that went to my heart. It was built of
grey cut stone in good-sized blocks, square, with two windows each side
the hall door. To some it might have seemed cold-looking, but not to
me, for one side was all over ivy, and the thickness of the walls and
the deep sills looked solid and comfortable after those nasty
brown-stone things all glued to each other in the city. It looked old
and respectable and settled, like, and the sun, just at going down,
struck the windows like fire and the clean panes shone. There was that
yellow light over everything and that stillness, with now and then a
leaf or so dropping quietly down, that makes the fall of the year so
pleasant, to my mind.

The house stood in beeches and the trunks of them were grey like the
house and the leaves all light lemon-coloured, like the sky, and that's
the way I always think of Child