From the moment he touched English ground his enthusiasm rose beyond all bounds; delighted to be once back again in his own country, and travelling the well-known road to his own home, he was elated like a schoolboy. It was never an easy thing for me to resist the infectious influence of any temperament near me, whether its mood was grave or gay, and I became as excited and overjoyed as himself; and I suppose that two exiles, returning from years of banishment, never gave themselves up to greater transports than did we at every stage of our journey. I cannot think of this without astonishment, for, in honest truth, I was all my life attached to the Continent--from my earliest experience I had preferred the habits and customs to our own, and yet, such was the easy and unyielding compliance of my nature, that I actually fancied that my Anglo-mania was as great as his own.
At last we reached Hodley, and drove up a fine, trimly-kept gravel avenue, through several meadows, to a long comfortable-looking farmhouse, at the door of which, in expectant delight, stood Amy herself. In the oft-renewed embraces she gave her father I had time to remark her well, and could see that she was a fine, blue-eyed, fair-haired, handsome girl--a very flattering specimen of that good Saxon stock we are so justly proud of; and if not all her father’s partiality deemed as regarded ladylike air and style, she was perfectly free from any thing like pretension or any affectation whatever. This was my first impression: subsequent acquaintance strengthened it. In fact, the Brighton boarding-school had done no mischief to her; she had not learned a great deal by her two years’ residence, but she had not brought back any toadying subserviency to the more nobly born, any depreciating sense of her former companions, or any contempt for the thatched farmhouse at Hodley and its honest owner.
If our daily life at the farm was very unvarying, it was exceedingly pleasurable; we rose early, and I accompanied Martin into the fields with the workmen, where we remained till breakfast. After which I usually betook myself to a little brook, where there was excellent fishing, and where, her household duties over, Amy joined me. We dined about two; and in the afternoon we--that is, Amy and myself--rode out together; and as we were admirably mounted, and she a capital horsewoman, usually took a scamper “cross country,” whenever the fences were not too big and the turf inviting. Home to tea, and a walk afterwards through the green lanes and mossy paths of the neighbourhood, filled the day; and however little exciting the catalogue of pursuits, when did I feel time pass so swiftly? Let me be honest and avow, that the position I enjoyed had its peculiar flattery. There was through all their friendship a kind of deferential respect--a sense of looking up to me, which I was young enough to be wonderfully taken by: and my experiences at Foreign Courts--which Heaven knows were few and meagre enough--had elevated me in their eyes into something like Lord Whitworth or Lord Castlereagh; and I really believe, that all the pleasure my stories and descriptions afforded was inferior to the delight they experienced in seeing the narrator, and occasionally the actor, in the scenes described, their own guest at their own table.